They Who Hunt the Forest
by Lumonyrc
Summary: As a rule of nature, breaking a wave before it peaks halts and disperses built-up energy. Unfortunately, Fate doesn't play by the rules of nature. The cost of a Fourth war: an equal number of lives, a thousand thousand generations of lost futures, and one infinitely unspeakably tortured soul of a child never given chance to be one. Alt. summary within, AU ANBU OC, 3/4th Hokage era.
1. Chapter 1

As a rule of nature, breaking a wave before it peaks halts rise of and disperses built-up energy. Unfortunately, Fate doesn't play by the rules of nature. The cost of a Fourth war: an equal number of lives, a thousand thousand generations of lost futures, and one infinitely unspeakably tortured soul of a child never given chance to be one.

Or, the one where some power-hungry immorals decided to put the words "bijuu," "infinite," "natural energy," and "pseudo" together in one sentence, not necessarily in that order.

Blanket disclaimer to all that is canon Naruto. Basic battle-gore and language is generally what the rating is for, with other things occurring less frequently and with little repetition.

On another note, a warning of a different kind. I'm a college student with a very studio-heavy major, so updates will in no way be regular (though I will try) or guaranteed. Please don't send me PM's asking me to update sooner. Encouragement and constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

So! Questions? Yes? Great!

Let the hunt begin.

* * *

Notes: Does oral removal of infection count as cannibalism? Does it? Because that just makes me wonder what Karin's blood limit counts as then. And a common first-aid tactic of removing snake venom is by sucking it out from the punctures.

Warnings: Some very explicit handling of body parts that should not be handled unless not doing so would result in death. And blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

* * *

If stars had souls, she mused, they would be silent, sharp things. They would chill the way ice chilled when already-numbed fingers gripped a chunk underwater. They would burn the way skin burned when flesh had already frozen until it knew not how to freeze further.

Souls of fire flared and threatened, waved warningly and snapped at too-close reaches. Souls of water wove and pushed back, grabbed and dragged and filled trespassing lungs. Earth roared full and hollow, rumbled and crushed and ground apart, wind whistled and howled, gently caressed and barreled through and viciously tore and shredded. And lightning screamed violence, temperamental and glancing, furious and piercing and entirely devastating. All the souls she knew were hungry and violent and utterly, utterly lethal.

But stars- stars merely watched. Silent, eternal. Reassuring, in a sense, and yet rankling in another.

She knew the touch of the other souls- had touched them with her own two hands, had snuffed out a number that her masters kept a count of, had even created a few, weak little things that had been snatched away and poked and prodded and mauled until they'd dispersed in flimsy, aching wisps of agony. Star souls, she supposed, might simply be those of greater beings. Even she could tell that those that grasped and clung at her, at the world around her, were nothing but the refuse. Bottom-feeders, scum. Insects and vermin, vultures and leeches. Certainly none of them could possibly own a star soul. Besides, they too were creatures of flesh and blood and death.

Or perhaps star souls didn't exist at all. Perhaps they were mere light. Perhaps the closest there was to a star soul was something touched by the stars' light. She'd never seen anything star-touched before. The forest was gilded by them at night, but lost the next morning. Then again, she supposed she'd probably seen little of the world, too little to make such a judgement. The ever-expanding tunnels and the strictly watched borders of the facility's grounds told her so.

If she had to compare them to what she _had_ seen, though, she supposed that, perhaps, the strange, blood-covered, still-bleeding man that had been shoved into a corner of her enclosure might do. His hair certainly glistened as if so, and never was lost to even the lethargic, fetid torchlight that sputtered weakly whenever the handlers made their rounds.

Like the stars, he did nothing but watch- except his watching was selective in nature. He watched the handlers, never responding to anything said or done to him. He watched the other cells, far away on the parallel sides of the large expanse of flat, cold stone that served as the main location of her routine subjugation, watched the thick darkness from which chains and emaciated limbs occasionally poked out when the handlers brought dim torches to the eternal darkness.

He watched her.

He watched what black shapes he could make out of her own chains and emaciated limbs. He watched the way she'd give in to discomfort every few hours and shift the slightest millimeter before returning to statue-stillness once more. He watched the way the handlers would occasionally pass her by when dropping by to ensure he was alive and bestow a few crumbs of stale rations and rotten _something_ to keep him that way. He watched the way they'd push her own meagre meals to her with a pole, the way she'd slowly, painfully stretch out her neck towards the shallow, barely-not empty, reeking bowls and painstakingly lick and scrape the bottom clean, dry tongue and unnaturally long teeth flashing.

(Though she'd never been taught the meaning of the word- and there'd never have been any reason to feel it before in the face of her masters, her owners, in all its pointlessness- something foreign and instinctive curled up and cringed in humiliation inside her at the recognition of what kind of image she must make to the stranger.)

It's the second time they pass her by when doling out their portions of scraps that he approached her for the first time. He'd pushed himself up from his position on the floor by the bars of her enclosure and padded over slowly, surprisingly nimble for all the time he'd spent on the ground. Crossing the twenty or so feet of open ground, he'd barely hesitated before cautiously placing a foot down into the territory of the dark seal inked into the cold stone floor, and then another, and another.

It didn't respond, of course- it was drawn to contain, rather than keep out, and was solely synchronized to her chakra signature. For him to step into its area of effect was something that took guts, though, she could acknowledge that. Being in the range of the seal meant being in range of _her_. The handlers never dared to do so. Not for a long time now, and not without at least three different forms of self-insurance.

She'd watched him directly for once, eyes slitted. Her eyes had a tendency to glow from the pattern her chakra was forced to flow through her meridians in her shut-down cycle, and while the intimidation factor was usually appreciated, she hadn't fully opened her eyes since the stranger had first been deposited in her enclosure. No need to inform someone dangerous enough to need the containment measures her enclosure afforded exactly where her head was, not when they were stuck in the same damnable cage together for the foreseeable future, and not when she couldn't _move_. Her abilities of sensing were sufficient to keep a decent watch on him, but that was the extent of her abilities in self defense in her current state.

The stranger had come to a halt just an arm's length away. Unhurriedly, he'd lowered himself down into a crouch, popping joints belying the previous fluidity of his movements, and then just as unhurriedly extended an arm towards her.

She'd silently bared her teeth, titling them up to let the barest shreds of light catch and slip over twin upper rows of triple cuspids and bicuspids-

-and paused. Blinked.

The moldy crust of bread didn't disappear.

A voice hoarse from disuse but still surprisingly smooth broke the thick silence that always blanketed the empty space when not filled with pain and fear and death. She might have flinched from the suddenness, she imagined vacantly, if she had not lost the instinct long ago.

"Sorry. It's not much, but I imagine you need it more than I do."

Allowing her eyes to open fully, she stared at the stranger with his hand in her face and a flickered smile on his own blatantly. He gave no sign of disconcertion towards blazing gold and purple rings, merely lifted the offending limb an inch higher, and inch closer, as if to make it easier for her to reach.

This stranger- was _strange_. The first words out of his mouth had been _to her_.

Had been an _apology_. Like he thought she was an existence important enough to have an opinion of him that he cared about. Like she was an existence capable of _independent thought_ in the first place.

She'd never been formally taught language in any way beyond commands, most of which didn't even need her comprehension in the first place, given her command seal. She was no fool, though. She'd come to comprehend the tones and fluctuations her handlers used, the difference between a word and a scream, a meaningless noise and a meaningful one, if only out of survival necessity. She'd certainly never spoken herself- she was not permitted. She was talked _at_, never _to_. It simply was not how the world worked.

And yet this man had. He'd looked at her, made meaningful sounds at her, and she- what? What was she supposed to do?

The crust bobbed, enticing, up, down, steadied.

She looked at the strange man.

He looked back, unwavering, unhostile. A sliver of star-silver struggled to outline a stray strand over his forehead.

She'd played this game far too many a time with a bored guard. But, perhaps…

Slowly, ever so slowly, she dipped her head lower, outstretched her neck towards flattened palm, bearer of a morsel of relief, and painstakingly licked up every crumb, dry tongue and unnaturally long teeth flashing as she just as painstakingly ensured they not break skin, even as she deliberately traced dangerous ivory in warning over calloused skin.

The stranger flashed surprisingly large canines himself when she finished, somehow warm and entirely devoid of the vaguestly malicious intention.

Inconceivable.

She drew back, retracting her neck from such a vulnerable exposure more out of uncertainty than wariness. She did not understand this stranger. He was not afraid of her. Granted, sometimes the occasional small animal she was sicced on unwittingly stared back at her in the moments before she ended its existence. Humans, however, were generally not so unwitting, and much more easily frightened by unnatural appearances. While she'd learned not all had as good sight as her in the dark, there was no way the man had not felt her fangs.

Seeming to understand her state of mind, the stranger shared another smile at her, softer than she'd ever imagined anything could be, and backed off,_ turning his back to her_ and returning to his position by the bars. She stared after him.

Out of every example of behavior and body language she'd witnessed and catalogued to herself in her short life so far, she had never seen anything like that.

Greed, anger, hatred, resentment, reluctance, fear, pain, desperation, even expectation and disappointment, she knew those emotions, knew the way they were worn. That thing, no, _things_ she'd seen in the stranger's eyes- she could not identify them.

* * *

The first day-cycles the stranger had taken up residency with her, no handlers came for her. No tests, no conditioning, no additions to any of her seals. It was unusual, to say the least. She'd warily observed the stranger the first two days before returning her focus to energy conservation. She'd take her breaks when she got them.

The stranger had arrived in a tumble of dead leaves and mud and blood splatters in equal measure. They'd tossed him in like so much refuse, and he'd laid there, sprawled out, wounds still sluggishly weeping, for so long that she'd begun to wonder if it there were such things as corpses that never finished dying. She was relatively sure he wasn't meant as food. Her masters fed her a variety of raw meat more often than not, usually stiff remnants of vermin from obscure corners of the facility, but had made exception to human bodies. Ninja bodies were usually valuable assets in some form or the other, but many often modified themselves as precautions, so she was instructed to let them be. It was just as well- her masters might have thoroughly impressed upon her her place in the world, but she still found the idea of eating humans rather revolting. They were disgusting enough when alive.

The stranger had stirred at long last at least a full day later, though it was often difficult to tell the time of day in the underground facility. He'd dragged himself over to the wall, propped himself up, appeared to take inventory, tended to his still-seeping wounds as best he could, and begun his watch.

Approximately a week after the stranger had been dumped in with her, some of the handlers finally came by for a routine checkup and maintenance on her enclosure and its seals. The little she'd seen of them up til then left her with the impression that something must have happened to the outer security measures again. They would murmur to each other quietly when far enough out of earshot of her cellmate, shooting wary glances at him, uneasy and flustered, and rush through the chores necessary to keep the two of them just alive enough to be useful.

Several more days passed, and then there was a sudden spike in attention given to her contract and command seals. The handlers finally came for her with purpose, activating a plethora of containment seals before pouring into her enclosure in the familiar abrupt flood of efficient subduction. Heavy shackles jangled and clattered across stone from sudden slack, ink and chakra hissed as they receded and were reapplied. A pair of handlers drew weapons and backed the stranger further into his corner as they waited for their fellows to get what they'd come for.

She didn't struggle- couldn't, really. Her body was stiff and strained from the extended period she'd spent kneeling, knees braced, ankles bound together, neck lashed to the center of the containment seal she knelt in and forcing her to arch her back in an attempt to touch her forehead to the ground, arms pulled towards the walls with enough tension to nearly dislocate bones and bring to mind gory images of flesh giving in and limbs detaching from other parts of her. Dozens of seals, carved into the ground, the walls, the ceiling, the bars, the chains, even, and especially, her own emaciated flesh, suppressed every last shred of chakra in her system and bound her own will, to the extent that she couldn't even twitch without a command.

He'd watched then, too, the stranger. He couldn't have done anything, though the possibility never even occurred to her until years later, when he'd confessed regret for it. The introduction of sudden light was blinding. By the time eyes adjusted, several lamps and torches would be taken away to throw them off kilter again. It would become murkily dim, even with the dirty orange glow of the handlers' lanterns, and at least a half-dozen handlers had closely surrounded her at any point throughout the process, but it would have been easy enough to catch glimpses of her skeleton-thin body knelt on the floor between their legs as they'd darted back and forth. She vaguely remembered a short, muffled rebuke and a dull thud, possibly marking a brief protest of some sort from him. She'd had no idea what it could have been- an attempt at escape, perhaps.

They'd half-dragged, half-carried her form from the enclosure, so light that it was easier to do the later than the former. Thus had commenced a day of excruciating pain as they'd grafted pre-drawn modifications into her seals.

* * *

She did not scream. She'd gotten over that stage a long time ago. Beyond the fact that it was utterly useless, it also detracted from her ability to receive and ride out the procedures. A too large gasp after a scream might expand her lungs too far, push her chest into a scalpel at the wrong moment, clip an artery against something else sharp or pointy.

Due to the various modifications she'd undergone, it was physically impossible for her to sleep, so sedatives were useless. The next best option was paralytic poisons, and those often made her partially suffocate, over and over, for hours on end, as long as her masters needed, and she really would rather avoid that.

Pain was the norm- it never really left her. With time, she was conditioned out of reacting to it until she no longer needed to be commanded against her instincts, because such things were irrelevant. In battle, she never flinched, was never deterred from sustaining an injury in order to land a debilitating blow. Under her masters' meticulous efforts, she was lax, pliant and silent.

Anything for the sake of survival.

Everything for the sake of survival.

Nothing for the worth of survival.

* * *

Many hours later, she had been deposited into the center of her main containment seal, resecured, and left as quickly as they'd come for her.

The stranger had made no moves during her return, so far as she could tell. Considering the level of disorientation her aching body had been subject to at the time, that wasn't saying much. What she did know, on the other hand, was that he'd wasted no time approaching her the moment the handlers had retreated. There was no bother with careful demonstration of neutral intent, just a direct, swift approach.

She'd bared her fangs again, perfectly capable and willing to use them, and choked on the jerk of the inked marks around her throat. The stranger had paused briefly to eye the black lines, but it was likely too dark to make anything out well, and a moment later he resumed his approach, though slower this time. She'd hunched over lower, muscles bunching in tense, useless anticipation, flashed the whites of her eyes in warning.

The stranger had again came to a stop just an arm's length away. Again he'd crouched. Again he'd reached out, slowly, slowly, lax fingers inching ever closer- she didn't know why he'd bothered, it wasn't like she could have _done_ anything regardless-

A snarl had ripped through the seam between the rows of her teeth, the first noise she'd made in his presence, low and guttural and yet still somehow echoing _childweakvulnerable_prey in its pitch.

This time the stranger had fully froze. She'd flinched, snarled again, mind a whirlwind of confusion. He froze, like her prey did, like her targets did, but he didn't smell like fear, he _wasn't afraid_, _why wasn't_ he _afraid_, he _had_ to be afraid, everyone, every_thing_, was _always_, _always_-

"Hey," a whisper breathed, a brush of rough cloth against hewn rock, "hey, hey, it's me, just me."

The stranger had spoken as if he was not a _stranger_, was not so _very strange_, was _familiar_-

She had perfect recall. She did not know him.

She'd lowered her head and hunched her shoulders as if she'd had the hackles to raise in defense- but she'd been in shut-down mode, so the effect was lost. Undeterred, the hand extended until it was a mere inch away, and hovered, so close that she could feel the faintest brush of warmth emanating from it.

He didn't touch her.

He certainly wasn't afraid, or even uncertain in his actions. It was almost as if he was waiting for something. What, she had no idea.

"Are you alright?"

One curled side of her lip twitched, wavering, confused at the use of the word. _Alright then_, some guards would sometimes say to another in concession of something or other, but here it was being used as… a state of being?

Somehow seeing her bafflement through the gloom, and perhaps guessing close enough at the cause, he repeated, "Are you hurt?"

Now there was a word she'd never heard before. Unable to help herself, she tilted her head slightly to the side at the unfamiliar string of sounds, trying to decipher it. She'd learned that sometimes one could guess at meanings from shared parts of different words.

"Injured? Wounded?" An unfamiliar emotion shaded the pronunciation. "I smell blood."

Ah.

Well, she supposed it counted. However, her cellmate was not one of her masters. He did not stand in the chain of command. At the same time, no one outside of it had ever asked a question of her before with the expectation of a reaction. Was she supposed to respond?

A few seconds of deliberation had concluded with the decision to simply stare and wait and see. The scent of her blood should be an obvious enough answer, anyways.

She stared, and he stared back.

The hand continued to hover. (_A threat? No, the lines of tension in the muscle were all wrong._)

Many long minutes passed before he opened his mouth again and asked-

She blinked.

Blinked again.

"_Can I touch you?_," he'd asked.

What kind of question was that?

There must have been enough light that day for her eyes to reflect enough to illuminate at least part of her face, because this man was uncannily good at understanding her thought process. His own eyes never left hers.

"Your forehead. To check for a fever. We don't have any supplies, and this cage is sucking the chakra right out of us, so there's not much we can do about anything, but it would at least be good to know if your body thinks it's in bad enough shape to shut down."

Well, as ever, she could growl and snarl all she wanted but there was no denying she was pretty much helpless at the moment.

"I wanted to get your permission."

_Permission_? _Hers_? _Give_ it?

Permission was something that belonged to the masters. She did not have any. She did not have the right to give it.

"May I?"

And yet this man was asking her for it.

How did one give another permission? She did not know how to, even if she'd wanted to.

She shifted her gaze back to the man's face from where she'd let it drift to the hand, and suddenly, it didn't seem to matter.

Practically everything about the stranger was strange and could not be measured by what she knew from watching the masters, but was that so bad? She did not know if there was a word for it, or how to properly phrase it, but something of the same family as that burning displeasure that dragged down her masters' expressions after she gave less than satisfactory results swirled in the pit of her stomach when she thought about the world she knew, the world she lived. She might not understand the stranger or his ways, and she might not be naive enough to think there could be no worse possibilities, but there was at least a chance that things could be better.

She didn't know how to give permission, or speak responses for that matter, but there were other ways to give answers. Obedience displays were hardly unfamiliar to her.

Gathering what strength her exhausted and weakened body could afford, she moved against the drag of her restraints and slowly, gingerly, pressed the crown of her head into the hovering palm.

It was a display of submission. The crown might be the hardest part of the skull, but the head was the center of most senses and one of the most glaringly vulnerable vital points, connected as it was to so many others- two major arteries, both lungs, the spine- and encasing one of the two most essential parts of the body.

_I put my life in your hands_, the gesture said. _If you wished to kill me now, I could do nothing but accept it_.

Not like she could've done anything otherwise anyways, but that was nothing new, and he'd done nothing to take advantage of it so far. Might as well make it more or less official, and make certain he was aware of it. Cornered creatures did stupid things, more often than not.

The man made a noise in his throat, something surprised and entirely comprehending. Now that he was so close as to be touching, she could somewhat understand why. Beneath the veritable cloak of blood and infection that hung in the air around him, the scent of freshly fallen foliage, sun-baked riverstones, earthy wilderness, and wild beasts of the hunt brushed her nose. He was a creature of the wild, and not the kind she chased into the ground. He was a _hunter_\- a hunter of the forest.

Her kind was not completely strange to him, then, even if he was to her.

Calloused fingers threaded through limp drapes of hair, seeking bare skin. She forced herself not to twitch at the sensation as they parted the strands, stilled, and tried to measure her own temperature against the not-quite-as-warm-as-she'd-thought-it-would-be hand. _Was that a bad sign_?

The man hummed a thoughtful noise. "I'm afraid I'm no medic-nin, but I'm pretty sure you don't have a fever. You do run a bit on the warmer side, though." He withdrew his hand and offered another of those curiously warm-feeling smiles of his. She merely blinked once in return.

Making as if to get up, the man suddenly winced mid-rise, shot a glance at her, and smoothly slid into a seat on the ground instead. She blinked again, slightly thrown by the unexpected display of split-second decision making that could have only been born of years' worth of life and death situations. Not a civilian type, then. She'd guessed as much, but this was irrefutable proof. She wasn't sure if the lack of concern in their proximity was a show of confidence or something else she didn't understand.

The sharp tang of flowing blood- the old, dark kind- stung the air. He'd reopened his wound- or rather, it had never closed properly in the first place.

She shuffled trussed limbs in an attempt to lean closer for a better idea of the wound. She was curious- from the amount of blood he'd been reeking of since arriving, he should have been long dead. The man noticed. Inconceivably, he maneuvered himself for her inspection, baring the glaring weakness to her without trepidation.

Leaving interpretation of the gesture for later, because she was starting to get the idea that there was really no point in trying to judge him by what standards she knew, she leaned towards the large gash in his left side and sniffed. She filed away the faded influx of scents as they poured out at her, systematic and automatic, searched deeper within the cloying stench of traumatized flesh-

An anticoagulant. She'd suspected as much. It was still a wonder how he'd yet to die from blood loss, though. Sitting so still probably had something to do with it.

For a second, she considered attempting to heal the injury, then dismissed the idea. It would have to wait. She was too weak as she was now to consume the pollution to both his flesh and chakra network as well as regenerate the injury. It was too large, and a serious infection had set in. If she was released from her shut-down mode into at least standby, she could probably deal with the infection, but the semi-shut-down she was under from the holding seals restricted nearly all movement.

Plus, she had no idea how the man would take the idea of her licking the wound. Even she knew it was hardly a normal thing for humans to do.

Flicking reflective eyes back to the man's face, she blinked slowly at him, trying to imbue meaning into the gesture.

"Pretty bad, eh?" He chuckled ruefully. "Teamwork is a wonderful thing, except when it trips."

So he'd had comrades. Someone had made a mistake, and he'd paid for it. Part of the reason why she had none, probably. They'd designed her to be a weapon. A kunai did not need to come in two pieces.

A kunai only needed a wielder.

A huffed grunt escaped her cellmate. He shifted the strips of cloth he'd torn from his pants tentatively, slipping one hand beneath the blood-drenched makeshift bandages, and gently poked around, adjusting whatever he'd stuck under to try to staunch the bleeding. They'd taken whatever gear he'd had and stripped his upper body. Standard procedure. He was lucky they hadn't taken his pants, too- probably didn't want him to get hypothermia too quickly.

It would be a bad idea for him to try moving again. He seemed determined to do so regardless. She had no idea why- there was nothing to gain by sitting by the bars. It was easy enough to hear when any masters came visiting, watching from the bars would only give a look at whatever form of light they brought with them. In fact, she was relatively sure it might even be a bit warmer towards the back of the cell, if mustier, due to the lack of disturbance to the air.

Perhaps it was her presence? He might not be afraid of her, and didn't even show much wariness, but that did not mean she did not disturb him. Humans tended to be unsettled by silence, and the only noise she'd made so far were a few threatening growls. But then he'd been silent up until now, too. He'd also given her some of his own measly rations, so she didn't think he was much put off by her overall.

Unable to pinpoint a reason for his behavior, she decided not to bother to think more on it either when he made a move to rise again. She let out not-quite-a-growl, void of threat and merely negative in tone. Her cellmate halted mid-motion again and turned his head towards her in vague surprise. Eyeing her contemplatively, he made a move as if to get up again, though readily halted when she made the noise again.

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Huffing out a wry sound of… amusement? he lowered himself back to the floor again, fully facing her. There was less than a foot of space between them.

"Can you speak?"

She blinked at him.

He made the warm expression.

She growled her not-quite-a-growl.

"But you can understand me."

She blinked, and tilted her head. How to give answer to that?

She tried a different noise, lower than her throat, drawn out and thrumming and echoing in her chest in a way that was both foreign and natural.

This time it was he who blinked.

"Are you… purring?"

Another foreign word. She tilted her head again, and it seemed he could understand the uncertainty in the gesture now.

"Ah, well, err. Are you related to cats, felines, in any way? It's a type of noise they make."

Well, she was nothing quite so _domestic_, but she supposed the answer to that was a yes.

She purred.

"Huh. What a coincidence. I'm related to canines. Wolves, dogs, the like."

She blinked. Where was the coincidence? She did not see it.

"Oh, but I don't mind that you're a feline. I personally think big cats are pretty awesome, too. Not to mention dangerous as hell if you aren't careful. Gotta respect that kind of lethality."

An opposing relationship, either antagonistic or competitive in nature. Seeing as she had no interest in it and her cellmate didn't much care for the expectations impressed by it, irrelevant and inconsequential.

"So."

A head tilt.

"Damage to your vocal chords?"

A not-growl.

"Hm. Not allowed?"

She hesitated. There was more to it, but…

A purr.

"Well, no one's watching right now."

A blink. Did this mean blinking was the universal 'other' response now?

Her cellmate blinked, too, suddenly, as if having realized something.

"Oh. Uh, this sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but you do sound kinda young, so… do you even know how?"

She blinked in surprise even as she purred in confirmation. He was a sharp one.

The look on his face almost looked as if he wanted to let out a string of curses, if she was right, but he kept it in.

"Well, I suppose we kind of are having a conversation. Managing one." He tacked on a swear word at the end after a thought without so much as a shift in pitch. The next question was entirely expected.

"So how long have you been here?"

She simultaneously tilted her head and blinked slowly at him. He knew she couldn't answer that- it was not a yes or no question.

"Ah, right." He flashed that warm twist of the lips again.

She let the air escape through her nose just roughly enough to be audible, then flicked her gaze from him to a back corner of her enclosure, then back to him. It would be easier for him to prop himself up in the joint of two walls than a single one.

He followed her gaze. "What's up? Something back there?" He made as if to get up again.

She not-growled, but this time it wasn't enough to stop him.

He pushed himself fully to his feet, almost stumbling as he took a first step. She growled properly this time, a confused mash of warning and something approaching irritation. It was not enough to get the full meaning across this time, either.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine." He shuffled past her and began to trace the perimeter of her enclosure with practiced steps. She knew it was unusually large for a simple cell, and wondered for a second if he knew what kind of thing she was. Probably not. The extensive seals used on her were likely really obvious signs of at least _something_, but that lack of awareness, along with the confidence born of being a predator, were probably the origin of his lack of both instinctive and conscious trepidation of her.

He made a full circuit of the space before padding back to his original place by the bars. He was definitely physically fit, as well as accustomed to pain, but that didn't completely prevent his breathing from coming just a bit faster, just a bit rougher. The wound in his gut was nothing to brush off. He slid to the ground and grunted, tilted his head back to rest against the wall and just breathed for a second before tilting it to glance in her direction again. She'd fallen silent once more.

"I think I'm gonna take a nap." He let his eyes drift closed. "Wake me up if anyone comes to say hi."

* * *

It was the next day before her cellmate woke again, and this time he was the one they came for. He'd let them take him without struggle for the most part, though he did test one of the guards' grip on him and got his ears boxed for his trouble.

They brought him back half a day-cycle later, dripping blood from a dozen new wounds and wheezing slightly, and threw him carelessly into her enclosure, more concerned with getting the seals on the bars reactivated. A cursory round of wary looks shot in her general direction and they and their flickering torches and lamps were gone.

She opened her eyes and stretched her neck forward, nose twitching. The sickly sweet scent of that drink the guards and masters favored clung to weeping red. She remembered a time when they'd run low on antiseptics and had resorted to the drink that stung the same way, and the feeling she sometimes felt when self-aware enough at the end of a recalibration session trickled through her. They still wanted him alive.

But it was strange- she'd never realized that emotion could be felt for anything besides her own experiences.

Her cellmate laid prone where he'd landed until the guards' footsteps and firelight had faded, then began the ordeal of peeling himself off the stone. He grunted and huffed a bit, but never gave away any of the usual signs of pain.

In fact, when she thought back, she'd yet to hear him cry out even once. It struck her again- this was a different breed of human, one driven by something besides just hunger or fear or pain. She was beginning to think she rather liked this kind of human. She certainly preferred it to the other in terms of company.

Shoving himself up against the wall, he panted for a few minutes. When his breathing evened out, he broke the silence once more.

"Hey," he murmured, voice tired and raspy. The small noises of swallowing (probably blood) sounded exponentially louder in the still air. Equally tired eyes slid open and drifted towards the shadows that draped her.

Level rings of purple and gold held them.

"Why are you here?"

She tilted her head. Blinked. The answer to that was a bit complicated to convey.

Apparently her cellmate realized that without needing prompting. "Right. Bad question. How about this- do you want to be here?"

_Want_? When was the last time she was allowed to want something? The not-growl very nearly was one. She might be resigned to her place now, but that didn't mean she was here of her own volition.

He chuckled sardonically, entirely undaunted. "Okay, that one was a stupid one, I know. But I had to ask."

Silence settled on them once more. She wasn't sure how much time had passed when he broke it again.

"If you could leave this place… where would you go?"

She stared at him. That… well, she'd never thought much about it. Not since… There was nowhere she really _had_ to go, and nowhere _for_ her to go. She had nothing to go to, and no purpose beyond that which the masters deigned to give her. Her purpose _was_ to serve.

He seemed to take her stare for what it was. He studied her, full expression hidden in the dark, though she could make out vague forms and shapes.

"I'm going to leave this place."

She blinked. He sounded so confident, so sure of his own words. How could he be? There were no gaps in the containment measures, and the exterior defense measures were formidable in their own right.

He grinned, the least smidges of light catching on canines. "My team is pretty good, you know, even if one of them isn't yet dry behind the ears and is still too clumsy for his own good at the worst possible times. They'll come. They'll come, and they'll make it through, and we'll leave together."

He tilted the grin into the warm expression.

"Will you leave with us?"

Leave? With this man? Actually, she didn't really mind the idea, but- leave? It was impossible to leave without permission. One only left on a leash. Not even the dead ones ever _left_.

And yet here this strange man was, foreign in body language, unafraid where all others had despaired, bearer of unknown emotions.

And he was saying that it was possible.

He had not been wrong so far, and while that really wasn't much to speak of, he looked at her, and spoke _to_ her, and even understood the wordless answers she gave his questions.

What could it hurt to throw in lots with him?

Well, actually it could hurt a lot, but that was entirely inconsequential.

But the seals- the restraints- the _leash_-

He did not understand.

He did not understand, but- could he?

She was not allowed to speak, and before that, she had been too young to get much practice at it.

But he was not a master, and she was nothing if not resourceful.

She had seen others speak before.

She had _heard_ others speak before.

She closed her eyes. Opened her mouth.

A trembling warble-

"Ah-"

-and a crack. A desert of sand and grit grated raw in her throat. She swallowed nothing, pushed it down, couldn't help but open her eyes a sliver to glance at her cellmate-

He was watching her, glints of light catching on two full rows of teeth, so, so similar to her masters' _delight_-

-but no, this was that strange warmth, this was that impossible sensation wrapped into expression, and something wavering and warm throbbed hesitantly inside her at the sight of it.

It was… not a bad feeling.

She looked down. Tried again.

"Ah-ye-" she broke off again, coughed.

"You."

Instinct under stress jerked her body in a suppressed twitch as her gaze sought out his. His face was something like urging, but softer, patient- still warm.

"You?"

"Wuh-eh-pp," she pushed out on clumsy lips. "W-ppn."

"...weapon?"

The echoed word was correct, but not nearly as warm, as his face fell into a shape tied to disappointment, but- deeper?

She wilted, then immediately jolted at the realization. She cared- she _cared_? What wasn't- When did that- _Why_ did-

"But not a tool?"

Glowing purple and gold snapped back to him. He had straightened, crossed his arms, narrowed his eyes, as if to say _screw it, fine_, though she only realized belatedly the meaning behind the expression. She was a bit busy rebalancing her reality.

She was not of the habit of lying to herself.

She _did_ care.

It didn't even matter why.

It didn't matter _at all_.

Nothing had changed.

Her masters hadn't changed.

"You're not a tool."

She was.

"Weapons are not tools."

She was-

Wait.

What?

She blinked at him, completely thrown.

He blinked back, looked off to the side, raised a hand, scratched a temple shiftily, though not deceptively so. "Well- I mean- Weapon and tool are two different words, right?"

She blinked to show she was following, though not sure where this was going. He didn't seem to really know either.

"So they can't mean _exactly_ the same thing, right?"

A slow blink.

"Well, when I personally think of those two words, I see tools as things that can be used and thrown away without excessive thought or loss. Weapons, though? Weapons aren't so easily replaced. I don't even mean in the cost or whatever other material sense. Weapons are _partners_." A strange pause. "At the very _least_."

She gave another blink, half by rote at this point, entirely lost. She understood the words, of course, but she didn't see what difference it made.

"Ugh, I'm explaining this all wrong, aren't I? Probably should have started from a different point or something." He let the silence fall on them again as he scrutinized her, mentally cataloguing everything he knew and could infer at this point.

"Did you know," he began abruptly, "it is said that the very best weapons choose their own wielders?"

Blink.

No, she hadn't known that.

"The stories about samurai swords are most numerous, but there are others. Ninja weapons, too- kama, shobo, suntetsu, nunchaku. I hear there is even a sword in Kirigakure that picks its wielders by the 'taste' of their chakra."

Interesting. But irrelevant...?

Her cellmate lapsed into wordlessness again, head clearly facing her direction, as if running a squinted gaze over the shadows that draped her.

Blinked.

He launched into a rasping series of tales of named swords and cursed blades, metal that could laugh but preferred to weep and wail and scream, hilts that burned firebrand hot and frostbit fringers.

And then he spoke of her again.

It was the first thing he had said so far that she doubted.

She did not choose her masters. She did not make any choices at all. She had no right.

He must have heard the disbelief in her silence- or at least the blank sense of _you-do-not-understand_.

"You're not a tool." The words held a startling firmness in them. Purple-gold rings met the gaze blotted out by the perpetual dark. And then the now-familiar slumped shape by the bars seemed almost as if it had caught a second wind, gathering itself up with a solidity that belied the sickness she could scent in his gut.

"And you're more than a mere weapon."

Yes. She was a living weapon, valuable for her versatility and trainability, capable of self-repairing and increasing in power over time. She was not a _mere_ weapon- she was _superior_.

And in any case, weapons were still bound to their owners.

"Mh-stur. Mah-sturss. Cannutt lehvve."

She imagined his hidden gaze might have glinted the unfathomable spark of stars.

"Can't? Or won't?"

Both. Neither. She didn't know. She'd never been the one with answers. Then again, she'd never been the one with questions, either.

Those ones were all dead.

It was the way of things.

* * *

They came again for him the next day, and again the day after that. From what she could tell, the masters had replaced her normal sessions with his.

Something had changed. They wanted information from her cellmate now, desperate enough to risk moving him around. His further weakened state no doubt contributed nothing to deter them.

Though she had not witnessed his prowess for herself, she had seen the way he'd walked, the way he'd ignored the physical distraction of pain for what it was- first his body's warning, and then a triviality. He was strong. And then there was the fact that they'd seen fit to stick him in with her. The fact that they dared to attempt to draw information from him now-

"_They'll come. They'll come, and they'll make it through, and we'll leave together."_

"_Will you leave with us?"_

Impossible. Not disbelief, but mere fact.

But…

The man was strange, had been captured, but he was certainly neither foolish nor incompetent. If he spoke truth, if his… _comrades_, came, if they eliminated the masters…

The masters had never instructed her for the possibility of their elimination.

Dull crimson wavered shapes through her lids. The customary efficient shuffle and manhandling, and then they were gone again.

Silence.

A long, exhaustion-laden huff.

The drag of skin and fabric across cold stone.

She opened her eyes.

Another week had passed since he had asked her that question. They'd- he'd- talked a bit more, though mostly snippets, and a majority of that had been him helping her get down her alphabetical enunciations. She could string them together into much more coherent words now, but wasn't much yet competent at proper sentences. The rest of the time he would tell her things- stories, scientific theory, rumors on people and countries she'd never been taught about, history, geology, shinobi culture, inane little tidbits. Irrelevant. Useless. Interesting.

She watched him drag himself to unsteady feet, stumble, and begin to determinedly shuffle towards her, making for the back corner of the enclosure. She'd finally managed to get it across to him that it was a better position altogether. He'd taken her word for it without question.

From what she could tell, the infection in the nasty gash in his abdomen was finally catching up to him. The rank stench of rotting flesh clung stubbornly to his form now. When he offered his meager rations to her, as he had several times since the first, she refused them. She could subsist on what she was given and what the seals permitted her to take from the earth that surrounded them. She _had_ subsisted on such long before her cellmate had come. At the rate he was going, he was going to die.

She no longer bothered attempting to decipher why it was that fact bothered her. It was the way of things. A unique one, compared to what she'd had experience with, but one nonetheless.

A plethora of new injuries now traced a veritable tapestry across his body, old blood caked on practically like a second skin. A new layer of hurts would overlay the older injuries each time he returned. Some of those had also begun to show signs of infection, though none so terrible as the gut wound.

Yet.

She was still in the seal-induced semi-shut-down mode, but after having been left alone for a full week since the last round of seal modifications and recalibrations, she'd recovered from and adjusted to the changes, even managed to scrape out a few extra scraps of chakra from between the gaps of the seals. She still couldn't really move, and it would be risky and taxing regardless, but…

He was going to die.

He _was_ dying.

She was averse to him dying.

She shifted, purposely disturbing the cold metal pooled around her ankles. They clinked and rattled, the metallic ringing cut dull by contact with solid floor.

The quiet tap of steps halted.

"Neko-chan?" The call was breathy, breathless.

Something coiled in her chest, tense and uncertain and weaker than curiosity. She rumbled a noise back, not quite a purr, but more purr than the not-purr with meaning.

"Yu. Heerre." She nudged another link of chain. It rang higher, almost reached a clear note.

The light padding steps resumed, bringing her cellmate to her side. He was warm and cold in equally concerning measure, radiating feverish heat from each break in his body while the few patches of untouched skin was as chill to the touch as the stone walls. She could count the scents of the infections with him so close. It was an unsettlingly high number.

"Doing alright, neko-chan?"

While that might have been a valid question, it would only have been if it were not coming from him out of the two of them. She huffed air in his face. He chuckled raspily in return.

"Okay, point. Don't worry, though, neko-chan. Like I said, my team will come. We've just gotta hold out for them a bit longer."

She'd never given him a proper response to that invitation, but he'd not seemed to care. Instead, he'd apparently decided to take it for granted that she would join them. While she knew it certainly wouldn't be so simple if it did come down to her masters' demise, she'd decided that following him couldn't be so bad. At the very least, she found it hard to imagine it could be anything much worse than their current situation, given the great contrast in her cellmate's behavior to anything she saw around the facility. She knew what deception was, of course, but there was just something… She wasn't sure if it was the man himself or the situation or just her more primal-sided instinct, but something in her decided he was not pretending. It helped that he'd not slipped up in any way, either.

One bloodstained hand came up bury its fingers in long ungroomed strands. They rubbed idly, soothing. She pressed into the pressure- submission, acknowledgement, and then something more, newfound in the last days. The closest she could come up with was _resolve_, though softer edged and more smile-warmth than grim.

She pulled away. Immediately, she sensed that strangely soft yet nervous curiosity rising like a tide in him. It was… interesting, the way he gave so many new emotions so naturally, the way she somehow inherently understood, at least in part, the nature of those unnamed emotions, if not the emotions themselves. At the same time, he'd been as open as a wall with those same emotions, or any at all for that matter, towards his captors.

"Neko-chan?"

Nudging forward through the dark in search of the limb, she found the slightly larger curve of muscle connecting the thumb to the palm. She carefully took it between sharp teeth and tugged. He went easily, squatting, then kneeling, shifting so trustingly into a position of vulnerability before her.

"What's wrong?"

His rapidly approaching death. She let go of the hand, traced her nose up the length of the arm she could now reach, searching. "Sick-k. Kill."

Alarm spiked the air, but tinted with the nervous blunted curiosity rather than the sour wash of fear.

Ah. Verbal order of operations.

"Kill sick." She paused; that still left a bit to interpretation. Hmm. "Ness," she decided. From what she inferred from remembered conversations, that should be the correct modifier.

A crust of dried blood more questionably smelling than others bumped up against her nose. She stopped her search, hovered over it.

The alarm wavered, probably comprehending but still uncertain.

The guards sometimes repeated orders in triplicate to avoid confusion. Repetition might clarify. "Kill-sickk-ness." She intentionally snuffled over the gash on the arm so that the light puff of air tickled it in gesture.

The sharply sparking focus of his attention finally abated, smoothing out the jagged edges, though his heart rate remained slightly elevated.

"Oh."

A mutant form of the direct opposite of tension permeated the whirl of emotions he compressed away. Confusion remained in a not insignificant proportion, though. "So… you know a way to deal with the infection?"

She gave one of the meaningful purrs. "Me. Clean. Can clean," she immediately amended, catching the slip up quicker this time. Well, to be more specific… "Cn-sume."

"Consume?" he echoed even as she sensed the briefest trip of confusion be swept away in open comprehension. "Oh."

Yes. He was very intelligent.

"But, for you to offer now…" He was definitely squinting at her. "What's the catch?"

...He was very intelligent.

She made a noncommittal noise. "Me. Seal-ed. Weak. Diff-cult."

She could feel the raised brow.

Very intelligent.

"Possib-ble fail. And me, sickk."

The spike of alarm flared up to puncture the air again. "The infection will pass to you?"

Huh. Well, technically… but at the same time, no? As far as she could tell, it would be taken into her body and then assaulted by her chakra and seal system. "No-ys-no." The lack of response prompted more detail. "Like, eatd bad food."

"I… see…"

He was very intelligent. He did not see, though.

A broad palm carefully rubbed fingers into her scalp. She lifted her eyes to his.

"Well, in that case, thank you but no-"

"No. You die." She paused. Tilted her head. Blinked. Corrected herself. "You dye-ing. I help."

He frowned. It was the first time he had ever directed one at her. Something curled up and wilted inside her, but she disregarded it. There were more important things at the moment.

"But-"

"Like eat bad food," she repeated, determined to help this man that seemed so genuinely determined to help _her_. "All time eat bad food. No different." Ah, unintentionally misleading phrasing. She did not want to lie to this man. A correction- "Little different."

Perhaps it was her full willingness to be transparent and upfront about the side-effects on herself, but her cellmate eventually caved in when she began nipping his finger, not letting him touch her, and refused to eat her own scraps when they were given to her, instead nudging them in his direction before ignoring both them and him. He let her lap away the pus and ooze from the smaller infection she had identified in his arm first. When she confirmed that she was fine after a half-hour wait to allow her body to process it, he allowed her to tentatively begin cleansing the most severe one in his abdomen. It was the most dangerous one for him, and depending on how her own body held up, she might not be able to see to all of his injuries- there were far too many for that. Best to at least neutralize the greatest threat.

And so, face essentially buried in the hole in his gut and nose clogged with the overpowering, cloying, half sickly-sweet half sourly putrid scent of diseased flesh, she listened to the man tell tales of shinobi that could help heal others by allowing them to drink their chakra-rich blood.

There had been a time when she'd been restrained and some other test subjects had been made to bite her until her skin broke, now that she thought of it. They had all died from chakra poisoning.

As she systematically drew out the pus and infection from the gaping wound, she spat out what she could and consumed it when it was necessary to pull the sickness directly from his chakra network and apply her own chakra-infused saliva to reconnect and close the yet-unscabbed tears and gashes. She also took the liberty of cleaning away what remains of the anticoagulants still coated the flesh while she was at it. Finally, drawing the two sides of the large wound together, she methodically sealed the two ends together again with liberal application of chakra-infused saliva over the new scab.

For all the work she had done over the course of two hours, the fact remained that it was a cleaning and patch job at best. The little chakra she had been able to draw on had gone into disinfecting and aiding scabbing. She hadn't had nearly enough to stimulate regeneration of any kind. Any kind of true healing would have to be done by the man's own body.

Her cellmate didn't seem to mind, though, even after she had tried to clarify it to him through three different selections of descriptive phrases. He'd merely smiled that warm-smile of his, broader than any he'd given before, and thanked her in a tone saturated with something profound.

The warm, wavering, throbbing thing warmed, wavered, and throbbed just a tiny bit more.

* * *

The next time rations were delivered, her cellmate offered her his once more. She refused the scraps on principle, but grudgingly drank half his portion of water. She had expended far too much saliva earlier. Her own portions were measly, pathetic morsels that had recently shrunk and dried up to nothing, though she still received intermittent, shallow bowls of water.

While she wouldn't starve from the miniscule portions they gave her, they were still necessary to an extent to allow for her body to grow rather than just stagnate. Her primary source of sustenance remained the bare trickle of natural chakra the containment seals permitted to be dragged into her system. To deprive her when her body was struggling to intake enough meant that they were willing to risk underdevelopment and possible irreversible weakening or damage to her in exchange for reducing the stress her various abilities put on her containment seals.

They were anticipating being unable to perform the routine maintenance in the near future.

It seemed her cellmate might have been right about his comrades. The fact that the masters had been getting increasingly irritable and vicious in their handling of him only gave more credit to his claims. Physical, mental, verbal abuse- everything was game in the world of shinobi, ever more so when applied to captives. When he'd first arrived, there had been little goading, the guards working silently to truss him up and drag him away. Now, though, the barbs came fast and sharp, the blows faster and sharper, and the trussing violent and filled with unnecessary blows and jerks of chains.

That or they were sending out a larger acquisitions team than usual, and were simply frustrated by the lack of results from their questionings. Probably the latter, actually. Judging by the heavier than usual reek of rot in the air, the death rate had been higher than usual as of late.

Among their jeers and snarls of hate were names. Most, she could tell, were insults, some of the standard fare and some of the more creative kind. A few, however, she could not determine if they were monikers or epithets, insults or true names. Irregardless, their oppressors apparently took particular glee from dragging those through the mud. It was for this reason she had been content to refer to him in her mind as her cellmate, or merely 'the man'. She suspected asking for his name at this point might be something of a sore point. A good few of the insults had revolved around the questioning of his name, of whether he was deserving of it.

He had never asked her of her name, though. Whether it was because he knew she did not have one or was wary that asking her was a sore point the same as it would be for him, given what she'd related to him on herself as a weapon, she did not know. Instead, he simply gave her one. 'Neko-chan,' he called her. Little kitty. A nickname, not a true name, not even really a title more than a descriptor, so she didn't bother to object to it. It made no difference, and it gave him something with which to call her attention to him. It served its purpose.

The day after she'd consumed the worst infection, he returned from a particularly savage trip out of the enclosure on the verge of death. (_Their_ enclosure; the space might as well belong to the both of them at that point.) Most likely they'd seen his abdomen had stopped oozing discolored blood, and had decided that that wouldn't do.

They'd torn it open again.

The scab had been peeled off, piece by piece, so that the edges of the wound were raw and mauled and open once more, sluggishly weeping plasma and rust and too-light pink blood. Some chunks of flesh had gone with scabs. They'd left the internal organs alone for the most part, seeming to still not want his actual immediate death, but instead had turned their deliberate attentions to the weeping edges. They'd shredded the skin in precise, even cuts running perpendicularly away from the wound, resulting in a morbid mockery of an elongated stylized motif of a sun or flower or even a gaping maw spanning from hipbone to lower ribs, navel to the small of the back. He'd had to be carried back. The guards had dumped him in front of her, sneering laughter remarking that she must have been driven to drink his blood out of hunger, though for meat or for death? She'd set to work immediately. The guards had laughed some more before leaving.

It was then that he'd finally asked her.

Curled into a half fetal position with his front facing her, he laid on his right side so that the gruesome gash in his left side was exposed upwards to her almost delicate attentions. Expanded as the hole now was, it was something of a miracle that his internal organs had only shifted around for the most part instead of slipping out. The wound was a terrible thing, nearly halfway to bisecting him now. The few strips of bandages they'd bound around his side had been only a cruel kindness. It was as much a physical torture as a psychological one. She could see darker splotches of fluids where he'd had to stuff a piece of himself that should never feel the brush of moving air back into himself.

"Do you, have a name, neko-chan?" He watched her work, the crown of his head left to prop itself against the ground, gaze drooping with pain and exhaustion in equal measure, lit by shallow reflections of the flickering glows emitted from his gut. He panted shallowly, raspily, careful to move as little as possible. His words came almost as slowly as hers did.

She stuck the sides of another strip of flesh to its neighbor and drew back to spit out fluid. "Divine beast. The." Nimble tongue ran over sharp ivory. "Beast lord, the." Something hard and something squishy were collected from seams and promptly whisked away with a curl of the muscle. "The child of forest." The residue hit the floor with a light _splat_ and a short _clack_. She buried her face in his guts again.

Her cellmate grunted and cut off a wince. "Those, are not, names. Are not, _your_ name. They, are titles." He flinched, tensed, immediately forced the muscles to relax, panted. "Labels. They are not you."

She nudged a lump of soft tissue into place and shifted another few over for better access. She was very familiar with human anatomy. She had torn quite a few humans apart, piece by piece, as her masters ordered, after all. "What me?"

"You tell me."

"Weapon."

"Child."

"Weapon."

"Kind."

She had no idea what that was. "Weapon. You said."

A featherlight touch to a knelt knee. She glanced at the limb- his right arm, awkwardly pressed into the ground, sprawled out limply to tap a finger against the side of her shin- and glanced back to eyes that spoke.

"Not-a-weapon. A weapon that is more."

She blinked at the eyes that spoke, the eyes that burned with unseen light in the dark.

She pressed another two strips of skin together.

"Have no name."

The eyes dimmed with the soft regret, then flared with something warm and fierce.

"In that case, we will find you one."

She did not object. It would serve its purpose.

* * *

The two days after that, they did not come for him. The number of handlers in the facility dropped noticeably.

On the third day, the world as she knew it ended.


	2. Chapter 2

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

* * *

"Fuck, move!"

"Find those-"

"Where'd that useless-"

"-mother_fuck_ing-"

_Screams_.

"-the _files_-"

"_Someone get down there and release the expendables!_"

_Her ears hurt_.

Rings of purple and gold blinked into existence.

_Darkness_.

It was unusual that noise could actually be heard from the other levels.

Opening her mouth, she drew the air over her scent glands and took stock. Nothing out of the ordinary on their floor- yet. A space of fluctuating heat and chill curled almost around the front of her on the floor was undoubtedly her cellmate, shivering weakly through the throes of a feverish sleep. She spared half a second to check his abdomen- still closed, fading scent of rot, reek of clotted blood- before sweeping their surroundings with a closer focus. The other residents of the block were restless. Some were pacing and jerking chains, growling and drooling in anticipation of blood. Others, those who had turned to fear rather than mindless hunger, were snivelling and cowering, doing their utmost to merge into where the corners were darkest.

They all knew the sound of the hunt when they heard it.

Another tremor trailed its fingers through the solid stone of the compound, stronger than the one that had coaxed her back to full awareness.

His comrades? A bit late, but more likely than anything else at the moment. Perhaps they had noticed the departure of the acquisitions team and taken advantage.

Another two explosions rocked the facility in close succession, and a rush of footsteps scrambled down the stairs into the block in the following momentary quiet. Musty orange bloomed and instantly illuminated the floor to eyes accustomed to the former near complete gloom.

"Hurry! Get into the safe room!"

"Activate the security seals on the stairwell!"

The banging clatter of something hard and heavy hitting the ground shattered the remaining sound level of the block as a rush of scattering papers flapped into the air.

"Leave it! Move!"

"But my-"

"Release the expendable containment seals! Open the cells!"

A sound like crumbling rock echoed through the floor. Half a second later, and the hiss of chakra burning into steam and smoke flooded the floor as twenty-four of the twenty-five cells in the block had key sections of their leylines severed and a veritable rain of chains and shackles fell to the ground. An ear-shattering series of ballistic roars tore through the stagnant air as the hunger-driven ones threw themselves forward. Steel bars groaned and gave where they hadn't opened quickly enough to permit the berserkers past. The masters, abruptly silent within their safe room in the far corner, watched as their creatures barrelled into the open space in the center of the block, rushing up and down the wide hall-like space, revelling in their limited freedom. It had been long since they'd been let out to hunt, even longer than it had been for her. They slammed into one another, grappling and tearing, engaging and disengaging as easily as others fell into their sights.

It did not take long for the hunger-driven to turn their attentions to other things, though. They lusted for more than competition; they hungered for the _kill_. Almost like a switch had been flipped, suddenly their focus was on the cowering creatures in their deep shadows. They stepped forward threateningly, singling out their chosen prey, and, sensing doom creeping onto their shadows, the fear-driven pulled their lips back and screeched fear and warning in equal measure.

Just because they were driven by less aggressive motives did not mean that they were lesser fighters. Quite the opposite, perhaps. It was fact she'd seen proven many a time that the cornered ones often fought the most viciously. The hunger-driven merely enjoyed the sour stench of terror the fear-driven gave off most. At the same time, the hunger-driven were not completely stupid, choosing the weakest to prey upon. A kill was most enjoyable when one suffered less in achieving it.

And so the block devolved into a bloodbath of its own. By the time the number of participants was cut down to a third the original swarm, the survivors had each made at least one kill of their own and now stood guard over their trophies, the hungering and fearful alike. The fear-driven had outnumbered the hunger-driven from the outset, and now continued to do so in greater disparity. Where over a hundred had languished in the darkness previously, now just over four dozen remained, spattered in their and each others' lifeblood.

A piercing snap cracked through the air. Instantly, all eyes were on the safe room tucked into the right corner of the wall directly opposite hers. The stairwell was folded into the left corner of that same wall, while the two that ran parallel between her enclosure and the opposite wall housed the other cells. Her wall held only her one cell, larger than the others by multiple times. Altogether, they surrounded the large, long, open rectangular space that had been left unused since her cellmate's arrival. Its primary functions had usually involved copious amounts of blood and bloodshed.

At the front of the safe room, securely ensconced behind a greyish curtain of rippling energy and black ink, a man she recognized to be one of the masters that gave orders to the others during her procedures stood stiffly, chin tilted a little too high for the distant disdainful confidence painted on his face. A black length of coiled hide reeking of fear and pain and blood and death was clutched tightly in a sweaty, white-knuckled palm.

The order-master uneasily raked his gaze over the crowd of bloodied creatures. 'Expendables,' they'd dubbed them, survivors who had already lost their worth as research material, who had survived as failed experiments and could not be used further, who had lost their higher reasoning abilities and thus fine motor skills in manipulating chakra in any semblance of skill beyond instinct.

Fodder material kept for the sake of those creations yet to be deemed expendable.

Fodder material kept for her sake.

Fodder material with enough enhancements and conditioning to command into a wall of meatshields against the intruders.

It had been decided to permit them to take the edge off their bloodlust in order to sate the remainder enough to command them. They did not have the time or resources to subdue them to the usual way and ensure their obedience. All those that inhabited this block were the most ferocious killers, _survivors_, that they had ever managed to create, creatures beyond reasoning with. If they were not united in the knowledge that it would be difficult to kill another strong enough to hunt their own kind, they would only fight amongst themselves when the time to fight came anyways. The seemingly wasteful loss was acceptable- for now.

Lifting the arm that held the whip, the order-master snapped it down, hurling the length, twisting and coiling, through the air and against the ground with a ringing _crack_. Inhuman ears flattened back in unison, teeth flashing in warning even as whites of eyes flashed in simultaneous disgruntled submission. The whip rose again, hilt pointing direction, and the attention in the room instantly followed it to fix on the stairwell. The master pursed his lips, drew breath in steadily, accustomed to the heavy weight of danger and bloodlust and impending doom that his creatures exuded like a shroud and channelling that steady reminder that _they can't reach you they can't touch you they can't hurtyoukillyoutearyouapart_-

-and blew.

The shrill whistle pierced through the air, pitched and steady and sharp. The equally shrill sound of shattering chakra restriction seals echoed it, and flat shards of black sloughed to the ground like sleet from the creatures' flanks.

_Hunt_.

Most of the hunger-driven surged forward, eager for the promise of adrenaline and flowing red, while most of the fear-driven hung back, a few exceptions lurking around the edges of the two groups. _Hunt_ did not necessarily mean _chase_.

Quiet descended on the block once more, though this one a listening quiet rather than a slumbering-beast quiet. Echoes of the chaos ensuing above continued to telegraph through the halls, the ceilings, the walls. A sudden sharp escalation in the clamor marked the entry of the creatures into the mess and held.

A feathersoft touch to her knee.

"Neko-chan?" he croaked in a whisper. She hadn't known such a thing was possible. Twin rings of purple and gold dropped to track the movement of his flank. Breathing was steady. Heart rate low but there. The greatest wounds had not reopened. But weak. Too weak. It was all too weak. He was in no condition to move, let alone fight, and yet she could see the knowing in his eyes as he held himself still, carefully maintaining the illusion of a sleeping body as he, too, listened to the distant chaos. She saw the knowing, and knew, too, that he would fight regardless. That, too, was the way of things.

"They're coming." The speaking eyes sought hers out. _Be ready_.

Was this what indecision felt like? It was something simpler, she knew. She had no right to _choices_. But would it have felt similar to this indecipherable spiral of contradicting emotions?

The thought fell away. It wouldn't matter in the end. Either he would take her or the masters would keep her and that would be that.

The sounds of battle steadily declined until nothing was left but silence.

One minute.

Two.

And then there were three more presences in the room.

They were gliding, flitting, fluttering things, intangible and formless and there-and-yet-not-there. They were the shadows that the guttering lamps and torches were struggling to hold at bay, the deepest darkest corners that the fear-driven sought refuge in, because they were shadows and they were not and suddenly that meant they were _in_ the shadows and another six bodies were hitting the ground.

Positions blown, a quick flare of killing intent blasted through the air from three different points along the walls before disappearing in the next instant, the three fluttering things rapidly abandoning those shadows for others. The creatures whirled and howled, darting out of their own hiding places, snapping and snarling only half-heartedly at each other as they backed towards the center of the room to form a misshapen ring, shoulders hunched, eyes darting, instinctively calling an unspoken ceasefire in unity against the new, greater threat. A few of the worse tempered and twitchy ones opened their mouths wide in the direction of the new corpses and gurgled deep from their bellies. Coarse orange and burgundy spilled from their jaws in scorching, snatching billows, and the creatures lent to the roar of flames with their own warped screams of threat.

The plumes of fire slashed through the shadows in bright flares of orange heat, nearly blinding after the long dark. Here again she saw and understood the masters' reasoning. The expendables could not be anything besides failures by the standards they had. With that one move, their sight, hearing, taste, and, to a slightly lesser degree, scent, had all been nullified. The loss of their intelligence was a burden- they would never meet the demands the masters made of them. Of course, the masters had no interest in their intelligence levels themselves. It was merely inevitable fact that not being smart enough simply wouldn't let them ever be enough against such beings as shinobi, those who looked underneath the underneath, planned five steps ahead and saw another ten. Opinions remained undesirables.

That said, they were not completely without minds. As the first plumes crested and began to recede, others with fire affinity stepped forward to breathe new heat on the tails of the first flames. Gradually, the shadows were eaten away from the walls, narrowing the possible hiding places down, down-

Confused, some of the fire-attuned spat more flame in several surges.

No presences appeared from the illuminated corners.

The fire-attuned creatures allowed the bright heat to subside. All around the block, the scattered corpses and trails of blood and fluid from the initial slaughter had caught the flames, providing crackling pyres to light the block. The way they threw hot light and washed-out shadows across the ground until it rippled like water made her wonder if this was what her cellmate had tried to describe of a sea of floating lanterns.

Burning orange danced, permeating the air with the stench of burning meat, and weakened grey-blacks mirrored the movements, jerking ungainly shades and tendrils along. The walls heaved with a cacophony of shades chasing one another across every surface, the flames crackled, the creatures snapped and snarled, the masters frowned and muttered and fiddled, the ring of black shadow inside the creatures' circle _fluttered_-

A surge of chakra pulsed from the ring of the creatures' own silhouettes as three figures, so fast they blurred, darted out and- a wave of blood-spray, a wave of screeched howls- neatly hamstrung a good half of the creatures.

Instantly, the block devolved into chaos.

They watched the bloodbath, she, her cellmate, the masters- watched and waited for the conclusion.

Having chosen to cripple the greater number rather than limit themselves to the small handful they could have killed directly, the three intruders held their own surprisingly firmly against the nearly eleven to one odds. No matter how the creatures lunged and erratically swung claws and limbs, the fluttering ones went hardly touched in comparison as they danced in and out and around, blocking and dodging and stabbing and slicing, dealing swift death on a wind that never reached these depths. The battle held even, gave, and fell on a slow decline as the intruders ground the creatures down with inevitable finality towards their fateful conclusion.

The sour tang of fear yet untouched by blood stung the air. The masters stared at the battle in barely contained terror, horror plastered bright and clear across their entire persons. A few had collapsed where they'd stood, whatever cowardly instinct that had sustained their scramble for continued survival so far used up and gone in the face of certain doom. Some of them might have had a bit of combat experience, but most only had basic training and procedure to fall back on. They were no warriors for all that they held the whips. Whips were for masters, those that commanded others to do what they could not.

Now, they could not fight.

Now, they would die.

The order-master was no fool. He saw this, and he knew what had to be done. He was not so naive as to believe that the intruders had not noticed the unreleased cell. They would wipe out the expendables and take whatever was so special as to have remained apart in the last cell to assuage their curiosities.

Eliminate all traces. Scorched earth policy. So it would be.

She saw this.

One of the other masters saw this as well.

The only one besides the order-master to remain standing, albeit on bowed legs and spine, darted wild eyes between the melee and the order-master and made a split-second decision. Jerking forward in a graceless lunge, he wrenched the whip out of the clammy deathgrip of the order-master. The order-master threw his arm out instinctively as he felt the leather-bound hilt of the length of hide lurch out of his grasp and connected solidly with the bone edge of the coward-master's right eye socket. Flung back by the weight behind the hit, the coward-master reeled into the wall and allowed himself to slump his back against it, hungry for the useless illusion of safety it provided.

The order-master twisted to face his attacker, face first sickly pale then incandescent with flushed fury as he took in the new situation within their sealed room. All the rest of the remaining masters were tensed, watching the faceoff. Clinging to the last vestiges of authority, he sneered in derision.

"What do you think you're playing at?" His voice was surprisingly level. "You still think there's any escape from this?"

"Not if you destroy the divine beast." The coward-master was panting from burn of adrenaline despite the lack of action. His eyes were peeled back so that the whites clearly bordered the entirety of the irises, and darted desperately between the other masters. "Not if you trigger the self-destruct sequence."

"_Coward_."

"Yes!" he shouted, convulsing forward sharply as if to give the word physical momentum. "Call me a coward! I don't want to die! But you- you just-!" He threw his hands about wildly, words escaping his scholar's tongue. "We don't have to die! The divine beast doesn't even have to win! So long as it buys us enough time to escape, we can leave this place, start over! We have the most important files, enough that the setback won't be devastating! They don't know how to contain or sustain or use the divine beast, it will inevitably die even if they manage to take it!" The man was near hysterical. "_We don't have to die!_"

The other masters stared at the coward-master. His eyes darted between each of theirs, beseeching and terrified and despairing.

A second, another, and a few hesitant steps shuffled away from the order-master, shoring up the coward-master. One woman clenched her fists, looked at the ground. "That's… I…" All eyes fell on her. She seemed to steel herself, shoulders hunching up in trepidation, eyes squeezing shut in brace. "I.. don't want to die eith-!"

A swish of air, quiet enough to be nearly drowned out by the sound of the bloodbath just beyond their expired safe space. It was a messy blow, jagged and inefficiently angled so that it caught on a clavicle and only sliced through a fifth of the neck, but fatal nonetheless, if only because it had not missed the artery. The woman's words literally caught in her throat, unable to escape in the sudden flood of lifeblood as she drowned on dry ground. Another body hit the floor.

Outside the safe room, another creature screamed and fell. Its severed leg tumbled down beside it.

Pandemonium broke out in the safe room. One of the guards behind the coward-master threw his own blade out to engage the killer, and then everyone was taking up arms, the masters drawing shiny new holdout kunai while the guards raised more weathered weapons. The coward-master's side numbered more, but was primarily composed of soft masters unused to combat. The order-master's side was the opposite- fewer masters, and though the guards were few, too, they were more than a match for untrained fighters. It stood to reason they held a greater commitment to their given duties as well- she was aware that some of the masters had been coerced into service. The fact did not make her revile them any less.

Amid the tumult, the order-master and the coward-master scrambled for the row of seal keys inked onto the surface of the back wall. The two rows of twenty four identical keys had already been released, but the set of three of the five furthest to the right remained untouched.

She watched the struggle over the seals avidly. The triple set controlled the physical restraint, natural energy, and chakra restraint seals binding her. The fifth and final seal was a sort of self-destruct sequence for the entire base.

The fourth, inactive seal key was to a killing seal.

The order-master was the first to reach them, shoving aside the body of the master he'd just stabbed in the temple and reaching for the fourth seal key, but the coward-master was not far behind. He clumsily launched his holdout kunai at the extended hand, forcing the order-master to jerk to the side, knowing he hadn't the control to activate the key with an injured hand, and then was upon him. A fist darted out, aiming for an uppercut to the jaw. The order-master stepped sideways to avoid it this time, allowing it to carry through past him while he brought up a knee into the coward-master's stomach.

The coward-master hunched over and the order-master allowed him to collapse to the floor, choking on his own tongue trying to get air into deflated lungs. Whirling back to the seals, he reached again for the fourth seal, slapping a palm over the black ink-

-and failed to move in time as the coward-master tackled him in the knees because he was staring at the seal in blank horror, the seal that was black and ink and flat on the wall and _not activating whywasn'titactivating_.

For an instant, the seal sputtered dim grey- and then the back of his head met the unforgiving ground with a solid crack and the seal spat and died. She wasn't looking at him though, because the triple seal was glowing from under a smudged smattering of red and the coward master was grimly grinning, shattered fist cradled to his chest, and the familiar feel of her containment seals swirling and racing in rivulets to drip from her skin like so much water was outpacing the rush of blistering heat flooding those same rivulets. Chakra shouted in roaring whispers, pushing, shoving, fleeing out from the tendrils of ink bindings and dragging the markings with it.

The order-master swore and stabbed the spiked handle of the whip he snatched back from the coward-master straight up into the soft flesh behind his chin and jawbone. Gagging on his severed tongue, the coward-master released his grip on the order-master's knees and scrabbed at the hole futilely as he keeled over one final time. Ignoring him, the order-master clambered to his feet and hurried to the body of one of the other fallen masters. He rifled the pockets, found what he was looking for- and turned toward the last cell.

In the space between the cells, the intruders finally seemed to have established their dominance over the creatures to the point where they could break off and regroup. Having maneuvered themselves around during the battle, they'd managed to reposition, with two between their cell and the last of the creatures and one blocking the sole entrypoint through the stairwell. The pack of creatures- because yes, they were a pack now, unity against the much-more-dangerous-than-they'd-originally-thought threat- shifted uneasily, forced again into a ring of sorts, though it bulged pear-shaped as a few warily backpedaled towards the corner of the safe room, away from the greater-than-they predators.

The intruders didn't pursue immediately. For all that they were shadows, made themselves out to be so and shrugged off attacks like a particularly stiff breeze, they remained human at their most fundamental, and the expendables were no slouches. Sparking puddles, sharp outgrowths of rock, gouges carved by unseen blades, scorch marks from flame and lightning alike- the entire block simmered with volatile chakra residue. Newly visible silver-grey armor and bone-white masks were singed in places, cut and torn and blackened, however glancingly; the creatures' efforts had not been entirely futile, and the intruders had not entered this fight at full capacity in the first place, if the intermittently continuing explosions were anything to go off of.

Shifting towards a more centered position, one of the two figures in front of their cell took up a more solid defensive stance while the other dropped back and darted to the side of the row of bars, searching for something, presumably some branch of the cell's plethora of seals.

A shout, a crack of a whip- a spike of fear-scent and anxiety shot into the air when the order-master saw what the crouched intruder was doing. Hurling the length of the whip through the air over the creatures' heads, he yelled something nigh unintelligible in his panic even as he clutched the thing he had taken from the corpse- a kunai, black and dull-glinting- as if in anticipatory preparation. The creatures surged forward once again, a vague light of knowing in their wild eyes, as if catching the note of near-hysteria in his tone, as if somehow understanding that it would be _very very bad_ should that intruder succeed in whatever he was doing.

It was too late, though. With a curling twist of both a gloved hand and a tightly coiled flare of chakra, the intruder grabbed whatever it was they had found and _pulled_.

A pulse, an overflow, a rush of chakra smoke-

-and then the long row of solid metal rods was rising, pulled, _sucked_, directly into the suddenly malleable stone of the plated portion of ceiling-

-and the intruder was rolling under the bottom ends of the metal rods and slipping cautiously forward to her cellmate's side after a brief, wary eyeing thrown in her direction-

-and the two other intruders were throwing deadly swathes of water and lightning, pincering the reckless charge of berserking savages-

-and the order-master was throwing, throwing the dead master's blade, the dead master's tag-wrapped now-glowing-and-burning blade, hurling it with panic and terror and utter desperation at the space between her eyes-

-and the blade was rushing towards her, slow, fast, no, but enough to hit her, kill her, when she was bound and tied down as she was and-

_The scent of wind and sickness and aged trees and pus and rich loam and salt and old blood and lemongrass and those little white bell-shaped flowers_-

She blinked, nonplussed, at the sudden dark that filled her vision, but then, no, it wasn't dark, not really, there was the glint of firelight against grime-layered skin, and there was the crusted edge of dried soaked-through wrappings, and there was her cellmate, above her- _above her?_\- panting and sweating and smelling like all those things she'd just breathed in through her nose and yet for some reason now gaining an enveloping cloak of burnt-flesh-smell-

He coughed, wet and muffled, and fine mist of scarlet sprayed through the air, through her hair, painted itself across her face-

_Master_-

A pained noise strangled itself out of his throat, a noise she would later find she would remember in perfect detail for all the rest of her life and yet be unable to properly describe, it hurt so much to think about, and then the intruder was there, gloved clawed hands glowing muted green and frantic eyes just barely discernible from the shadows of the mask's eyeholes and-

_Why_-

"Yo-ou al-" -a gasp- "-lright, nek-ko-chan?"

-_wHY_-

The ink chains running straight up and down from the floor and ceiling to connect to the constrictive bindings around her neck jerked and she distantly registered the fact that he'd had to grasp the upper one in an attempt to keep from collapsing on top of her-

"Sir, your back-"

-and the intruder with the glowing hands was speaking, not to her, no, to him, but he wasn't looking at the intruder, he was still looking at her, waiting for her response, and-

"Why?"

-and he _smiled_ at her.

He laughed at her.

"Wha-t a, thing to ask."

He twitched, a full-body thing, and the intruder with the glowing hands pulsed the glow and stopped trying to talk to him in favor of containing whatever damage- _damage, damage to his back, he was down and wounded and there were still threats in the vicinity_-

"I had, the choice to, do, it, and I thought, it was the, thing I, ought to do, so I- I did it. Because I, wanted to."

She didn't know what to say to that.

He grinned at her then, teeth and tired ferocity, and she didn't have to.

"Hey-y, neko-chan, look." He panted some more, gave a self-amused chuckle. "My friends are here."

So they were.

"You coming with?"

She might not have known much about the social standards he operated on, but these just couldn't be the appropriate circumstances for any of this.

Behind him, something scraped and screeched and crashed into something less sturdy.

"Befoorr, nee-d."

He had asked her before, and she had decided that however things played out would be how they did. And yet, he had made a choice, and now was giving her a choice- an opportunity to influence that outcome.

"Anything, neko-chan."

Unconditional accommodation.

Unconditional trust.

May she die before ever betraying that trust, intentional or by mere existence.

The wind-rushing sounds of releasing chakra that had been hissing since the release of the triple-seal finally dipped, weak and spluttering and dissipating and-

Four soft sounds, like the breaking of the threads the masters sometimes used to stitch pieces of creatures back together. Black ink crumbled and dissipated into the gloom of the enclosure, the cell, the _cage_ that could _hold her no longer_.

_Late, late, too late to stop it_-

-but not too late to fix it.

She caught him when he lurched forwards, falling, having lost the support from the ink chains of the binding seals, and lifted her hand- _loose, free, truly free, so light, so _free- ignoring the glowing-hands-intruder's protests as she reached around and pressed it, palm open, fingers splayed, into the raw, smoldering ruins of her cellmate's- no, her _friend's_ back (whispered between pained pants and the squelch of infected flesh, _you're my friend, too, neko-chan_). A fine tremor traced its way through him, but he did no more than suppress a grunt and meet her gaze with a question in his unwavering own.

He knew the power of blood in contracts, then.

Good.

Bringing up her other hand, as well as drawing the first back around from his back, she grasped the hand attached to the shoulder not presently slung over her tiny frame and smeared his blood across his own much larger palm. She gave him one last, long blink, trying to push all the meaning of allegiance and dedication and submission and for-you-I-would-live-fight-die she could into it, and then twisted around to bare her own back to him.

She would not deceive him in this. She would have him know what he was getting himself into. She did not want him to look at her like that when all he was looking at was false.

Behind her, she felt him pause at the sight of her command matrix.

The glowing-hands-intruder- no, friend, glowing-hands-friend- had fallen silent before, but drew a sharp breath now. She paid them no mind, proper friend-making could come later.

A long moment.

Two.

Something else exploded and thudded into the walls.

"Neko-chan."

A death scream.

Two.

"You are not a weapon."

She didn't turn to look at him. There was no time.

"For you. Fight, I."

He swallowed, gritted his teeth with a faint creak.

"Let me fight."

He was very intelligent. Having seen the measures with which she'd been restrained, and now seeing the command matrix, he would understand the implications of those three simple words.

Because, etched into the mottled scar tissue that covered the span of her back, was a large, intricate, beautiful piece of calligraphy, painted to interlace the myriad tumble of the rest of the black, black ink that spilled over her scars, brought to the surface by forces she couldn't be bothered to decipher just then.

Because, just below the nape of her neck, were a pair of kanji.

奴隷

Dorei.

_Slave_.

They needed her to fight.

She could not fight without this.

Slowly, slowly, that large, warm hand pressed into that space of her back just below the nape of her neck.

"You are not a weapon," he whispered fiercely. "You're not an _object_, not a piece of _property_. I'll show you. I'll prove it to you. _I promise you that_."

She believed him.

Under the press of his palm, the matrix came alive with a ripple of white and silver.

Five characters flared with the light of an active seal, and she felt something within it, within her, reach out and touch that warm warm chakra that seeped into her skin from the layer of blood pressed into her back. The tentative touch, careful, searching- asking permission- it was familiar, yet not. They had attempted to use the command seal before, the masters, attempted and inexplicably failed. They would reach cruel, grasping, yanking tendrils of demand into her, and yet never quite manage to get a solid grasp on that something inside of her.

For the first time, she gave a response. She reached back-

-and clasped something warm.

_Warmth_. She could really start getting used to the sensation.

The newly formed connection pulsed. Chakra rushed into it, into her, a meagre drip compared to the sudden influx of natural energy, but enough to serve its own purpose, sealing and smoothing over the connection until it was a bond. Strength flooded her body, returned with the surge of foreign chakra and-

_-enough, enough, it was _enough_. Enough to kill, to maim, to _slaughter_-_

_To eliminate the threat to her master_.

_Her Master_.

The meagre drip shriveled up to nothing, its job done, and her Master released a shuddering breath over her shoulder. The maelstrom of conflicting emotions whirling within him conveyed itself through the new bond, strange and familiar at once, but there was no time to decipher them right then.

Her body was changing with the intake of chakra, recognizing the precarious state of health her Master was in and automatically shifting her from the semi-shut-down mode induced by the containment seals into the most aggressively powerful form she had taken so far- the 'semi-awakened mode,' as the masters had called it. Muscles thickened and corded, bones creaked and morphed, and, with a brief flash of concentrated awareness, she realized that her vocal chords were among those parts of her changing into more bestial shapes.

The bloodied palm disappeared from her back, and she turned back around to face her Master, agonized silver-grey meeting twin rings of purple and gold. Throat convulsing, straining, she forced out a burble of nonsensical noises and managed a disjointed chain of words as the change took hold.

"I, to act-t, orders, need. You need, need yuu. C-mmand."

A pained, conflicted expression she could not see twisted his face- her eyes were changing now, irises twisting, pupils contorting, sight warping, fading, fading, sharpening- but she did not need to see it to know it was there. The bond thrummed with it.

She pushed out a last few words of urgency, already warped and butchered by tones no human ought be able to make.

"Mhe. Yuu. C-mm-nd. _Fight_."

Reluctance echoed down the bond.

She held his gaze.

He reached out, slowly, too slowly. Threaded his hand through the thickening tangle of hair-_fur_-hair at the base of her skull. Leaned in- pulled her into him. Pressed the side of her face into the side of his own. Cheek to cheek.

"Live," he breathed.

Like it was a secret to be shared.

Like it meant a thousand little things and a million larger ones.

Like it was the single most important thing he could ever tell her.

Like he was going to die.

But he wasn't going to die. She would not let it be so.

She took the second meaning and ran with it. She would make that one word mean everything she needed it to.

Everything that his continued existence needed it to.

Because she certainly wasn't going to _live_ without him.

Far in the corner, beyond the ongoing carnage, the order-master leaned slumped against the wall, expression blank, eyes fixed on her, the fifth seal seething with chaotic energy next to him as previously concealed lines of sealwork made themselves known across the walls, the floors, the ceilings.

Stone shivered.

The world trembled.

Creatures and humans shrieked in symphony.

_Master's friends_-

Vision returned in full sharpened force as twin rings merged and purple-gold starbursts blazed in the darkness.

Seals flared.

She _moved_.

The world fell apart.

* * *

_Darkness_.

The world pressed in around her.

She breathed.

Coughed.

Blinked open eyes and promptly shut them against the stinging dust and closed her mouth and held her breath.

_Four warm bodies beneath her, shielded in the dome of her enlarged frame and two extra limbs_.

_All breathing_.

She shifted her stance slightly, testing the weight of the world on her back. The stones shifted, unstable, and a rain of dirt poured over a shoulder into a small pile over one of the friends' legs.

_A muffled groan_.

Her command matrix throbbed, constant in its alert of her Master's continued state.

Beneath her, someone shifted.

Tilting her head downwards, she carefully made sure not to let that particularly large piece of unstable debris past the press of her skull while she huffed a gust of air at the prone figures beneath her. They needed to wake up if she was going to get them out of the slightly pressing matter of being buried alive.

The first to stir was the one with the scent of the glowing-hands-intruder, no, glowing-hands-friend. Apparently this was a good thing- they immediately turned their attention to the others, hands aglow once more, and swiped a palm over each of their foreheads. They woke quickly.

They took stock of their surroundings.

Noticed her.

Very carefully froze.

(-except her Master. She felt his smile, and felt something light swirl within her at the knowledge.)

She imagined her eyes were glowing. She was watching them carefully, very carefully not moving, since she was not their enemy. Hopefully, her Master's friends would understand that. At the very least, the glowing-hands-friend ought to.

Her Master spoke up. Presumably they could not see each other either, and thus could not make use of those interesting gestures she had seen them make during their battle.

Presumably, her Master should not have been speaking, either, but she supposed there was little choice in the matter.

"Everyone okay?" A subdued chorus of affirmations.

"Neko-chan?" _Warmth_. She carefully regulated the growling tone of her responding purr. Her more bestial forms didn't only look more aggressive.

"Uh, Zouge-taicho…" One of her Master's friends started uncertainly.

"No worries," her Master assured, faintly amused. "Neko-chan is a friend. We can do proper introductions later. For now, we should get ourselves out of here. It seems like we've been buried."

"Yessir," uncertain-friend responded. "Hermetically sealed. Stagnant airflow. Time limit…" She got the distinct impression he'd glanced up at her unseen yet obviously looming form. "...maybe five minutes."

"Hmm." Careful shuffling ensued. "Status report."

The uncertain-friend had broken all the bones in their left leg and dislocated the arm on the same side. The glowing-hands-friend had gotten away with a burst eardrum and fractured right forearm. The last of the intruder group, the tallest of them all, was having trouble breathing and reported at least five fractured and three broken ribs. This was all discounting the severe burns each had suffered in the self-destruct seal's explosion- the uncertain-friend across the left side of their neck and torso, the glowing-hands-friend over their upper left arm and the flat of their abdomen, the tall-friend over both legs and around their lower back- as well as the collection of cuts and other flesh wounds received from their initial break-in and the subsequent battle against the creatures.

And then her Master- well.

None of them were in any condition to really be moving, let alone fighting, by the glowing-hands-friend's diagnosis, and while she had certainly had to do so in worse conditions herself, she had to agree that it was not advisable.

"I see," her Master received the information with calm composure. "Options?"

"I'm out of chakra." The uncertain-friend sounded like he might have made a face to go with the admission. "Can't drag us out with a jutsu- we're at least two hundred feet below ground. And we each took a soldier pill right during earlier combat. That was… well, just under an hour before we all passed out. If we were only out a moment, taking another now wouldn't be the best idea."

"We're all seriously injured, and I'm low on chakra too. Had to remove some contaminants that looked like poison, but I can't be sure. None of us are in too much danger so long as I can treat us within the next hour, but I need to administer immediate treatment if we're going to last long enough to make it anywhere for proper measures."

"I'm not adept enough at earth techniques to pull us all two hundred feet."

Her Master sighed. "I've got some chakra, but I'm not good enough at earth for that either. And considering the collapse, it's way too unstable for us to attempt to leave with anything less than a jutsu-"

He cut himself off. She could feel the way his attention snapped to her.

"Neko-chan, are you…?"

His line of thought somehow _conveyed_ an impression of itself over the bond. She let out another purr of admission.

He swore. "I knew we couldn't have been so lucky."

"Taicho?"

"We're not in some luckily uncollapsed corner. It's Neko-chan- she's holding up the earth around us."

A beat of silence. Then the others let themselves swear a few phrases too.

She let out a low rumble at the distress that was emanating from her Master, the emotion catching in her own, but she dared not lower her head further to seek him out in the darkness.

Another trickle of dirt fell through a gap between her limbs.

"Sorry, no, it's okay Neko-chan, we're fine, I'm fine." An inaccurate assessment. "Just, a bit hand-tied at the moment." Slightly less of an inaccurate assessment. And the glowing-hands-friend _had_ done something that had reduced the scent of fresh blood. Her Master was even speaking more fluently now.

The rustle of clothing, and then the soft light of the glowing-hands-friend's technique lit the small pocket of space with a dull green glow. They were working again on her Master's back, pulling out dirt and grime and sealing the flesh with scabbing as quickly as possible.

And in the dim glow, they looked upon her form.

She smelt the sparks of fear, saw the startled jerks. They recoiled.

But only for a second.

There was fear- but there was also a tentative something else.

Her Master smiled.

"A big Neko-chan, eh? You're just full of surprises. Coulda sworn you were a tiny little thing."

She purred, immensely relieved, though she could not have explained in that moment why, or over exactly what, even if some subconscious part of her could have. She reached for the bond, weak but strong, and tried to will her thoughts into it.

Her Master blinked, surprised, but easily recovered. The glowing-hands-friend released the technique, momentarily plunging the little space into darkness as they moved to another friend's hurts. "You can? All of us? Are you sure? Will you be okay?"

She purred. Anything for her Master.

"Was that a yes?" All three of her Master's friends were watching their exchange warily, though the fear had abated for the most part. Impressive. Or foolish. One of the two.

"Yes, that was a yes." Her Master breathed deeply, pushing himself up into a crouch so that he could reach slightly trembling hands towards her face. He had lost much blood. She blinked at him slowly, allowed herself to lean ever so slightly into the touch. Another small shower of dust and debris trickled down. He petted the newly grown fur of her face and ruff and spoke to his friends without turning his head. "Emergency first aid only. We'll have time for more once we're up top."

The glowing-hands-friend quickly stemmed the worst of the flesh wounds, leaving the mending and the bones for later to set. Everyone was breathing more harshly now. They were out of time.

Her Master's friends approached warily but unflinchingly, trusting in their friend. She eyed them warily in return, but trusted in her Master as well. She gathered them close, urged them in to hold fast to her underside, the vulnerable fur and flesh of her soft belly, the space above her beating heart, and carefully wrapped her extra appendages around them, allowing the tons of rock and dirt they'd been holding back around her flanks to gently tumble into the ever-shrinking space.

With four injured forms pressed tightly to her, she called up the thrumming power so long absent and let the walls of their little world fall through her.

The small space collapsed in on itself as she turned away and headed upwards. She didn't stop to consider the flickering signatures all around her, buried in the earth. Either they would perish, or also return to the surface if they were capable. She would deal with any hostiles, of course, but she needed to get to the surface before them so as to drop her passengers off somewhere defensible, or at least shift her hold on them. She couldn't fight while carrying them pressed into her underbelly.

It took just over two minutes to breach open air. Normally it wouldn't take nearly so long, but she'd never carried either injured or passengers with her before. Unfortunately, that meant that they were not the first to arrive.

She only had enough time to drop her passengers- carefully, carefully- in the hollow of the roots of a large tree she'd had the presence of mind to surface near at the edge of the entrance clearing before the first wave was on them.

Snapping her head up, she caught the most rash of the assailants in her jaws and promptly crushed his thoracic and abdominal cavities. A quick shake and release sent the corpse careening into the fool who thought the back of her head was a blind spot, and an almost casual extension of the extra appendage on her right elicited a chorus of more broken bones before both bodies were hurled into the underbrush, undoubtedly dead. She stretched out its pair and flexed the stiff new muscles in tandem, allowing the attached feathers to spread and catch the air as she re-familiarized herself with having wings. Eyeing the proper formation of perimeter guards that had apparently been spared any fighting so far, she drew in the cool spice of fresh forest air-

-and breathed out inferno.

The high-intensity flame burst outwards in a plume of burning death, easily catching the remaining first-responders. Half a dozen charred bodies faltered in their charge and hit the ground on the last of their momentum.

In the brief respite that followed, she glanced underneath herself and caught her Master's eye. He nodded to her even as reluctance colored the motion. He'd also caught the signatures of the other congregating forces and knew that fleeing would just be leaving their backs open. Plus, their mission…

None were to be left alive. He wasn't much inclined to argue, personally, either, especially when Neko-chan was an exception to that particular parameter. He just really wished it didn't have to be her who did it.

"We can take care of ourselves."

She dipped her head in acquiescence and stepped out from over them, moving towards the center of the clearing, though stopped before reaching it so that she remained in a semi-defensive position.

Behind her, a sudden series of sharp intakes of breath found her ears swiveling back towards them in alert. There were no hostiles in their direct vicinity, all their chara signatures were still relatively stable-

The weight of many heavy gazes was pinned to her back.

Ah.

The self-destruct activation, managing to reach them all, shielding them from the blasts and the collapse…

It probably didn't look so good.

Of course, she'd suffered worse before. There was no need for such concern; she would heal. More pressingly important were the enemies before them now.

She flexed a shoulder, dislodged a spike of stone, and tried to convey the idea of _combat-capable_ down the bond.

A strange sense of resigned ache answered it. Something to mull over later.

A barrage of metal shot out of the undergrowth; widespread, area of effect. Curling her lip, she opened her mouth and _roared_, infusing the sound into a wave of disruptive chakra that hit the projectiles as if solid, scattering them like leaves and slamming into the throwers. Over half faltered, disoriented, and fell to the immediately following blast of searing flame. Two managed to leap out of the way, three blocked and suffered severe burns.

The two that avoided the attack completely immediately countered, one spitting a high-pressured stream of water and the other slamming hands to the ground for a liquified wave of earth that built on its own momentum. She ignored the easier option of simply dodging the attacks, highly conscious of the four signatures behind her, and slapped a heavily built paw onto the earth herself, rupturing the ground through sheer brute force. The split rushed forward and crashed into the earth wave, directly breaking the attack in half so that it simply passed by on either side harmlessly. Lifting the other paw, she flexed the digits and thrust it, claws extended, straight against the forceful jet attempting to puncture her neck, splitting it into a great shower of harmless droplets.

These were clearly lesser-ranked guards. Never once had they slowed in their charge towards her. Both clutched something white and fluttering in one hand- restraining tags, the kind used on those creatures leagues lesser than the expendables- and had their eyes fixed on the sections of the command seal that overflowed onto the tops of her shoulders and flanks.

They thought she was a mere fodder-creature.

No fodder-creature could maintain a form so large as she could. Nor could one hold one so stable.

She was insulted.

She peeled her lips back all the way, exposing her oversized cuspids to the fullest, and plucked the suiton-user out of the air. He died by a fang through the heart, surprise frozen upon his face, evidently having believed he'd not been yet within her reach. The other froze up without her needing to do anything else, shouting something- a name?- and staring in abject horror at the decidedly neat puncture in the other's chest. The three other survivors of her earlier attack finally caught up then, launching their own attacks- doton, doton, suiton.

_Futile_.

She darted forward, no longer so concerned that such weak opponents could pose a threat to her Master and his friends, even injured, even through a fluke. They'd handled the expendables perfectly well- these opponents were nothing in comparison. Their ninjutsu casting rate was slow, movements hesitating and wasteful, and they were severely underestimating her, let alone even beginning to account for the others- they were _prey_, in truth.

She reached out with her senses as she dealt with the weaklings, examining their presences and comparing them to the other remaining signatures.

-_a flick of a paw and a head bounced, once, twice_-

A swarm of similarly weak presences raced confused paths above ground. Those of similar strength below ground were quickly fading, no doubt fallen to the self-destruct protocol.

-_desperate, useless wriggling_-

The only things she really had any concern for were the expendables, if any survived. She could sense a few of their signatures flickering far below, some struggling slowly upwards through the rubble of the collapse.

-_leaned down to the dying thing pinned by one paw and grabbed the torso between her teeth and pulled_-

She would wait for them, then, lest they attempt chase later. In the meantime, her Master's friends were doing something with wires and sharp metal things, and the swarm of weaklings was peppered with a few stronger signatures.

Leaning out of the way of a particularly desperately wild sword thrust, she waved a wing forward in the space she'd vacated and batted the weakling away. A loud snap marked the breaking of his spine.

She was confident in her senses, and her senses told her that the area around them was clear for the most part, but the swarms had noticed their presences if their changing movement patterns were anything to go by.

Her command matrix might have had several mechanisms built in for her to protect her Master, but when it came down to it she was an offensive fighter, not defensive. Most of their opposition was weak and undoubtedly no match for her, but they were many, and, while capable, her Master and his friends were still injured and in no condition for anything beyond self-defense. She would move them to somewhere more secure, yes, and then return for the swarm.

Turning away from the carnage, she loped back to where the others waited. Unsurprisingly, she was greeted by gazes significantly more cautious than before. Blood had soaked through the majority of her coat, her own on her back and her prey's on her chest and teeth and paws and jaws and claws, though her coloration did much to hide the worst of the stains.

Her Master smiled at her, though it was strained, but a whisper from the bond told her that it was not out of fear or revulsion. What it _was_, she did not know, could not recognize, but that was fine. It was enough that he was not repulsed by her.

Tentatively, she lowered her head towards her Master and nosed his chest. He smelled of blood and perspiration and sickness still, and a bit of the scent of battle-rush- adrenaline. But underneath it, there was something else, more concerning for the fact that it had not been there earlier. Shock, the masters had called it; in fact, all four of them seemed to be suffering from it. They seemed aware of it, and seemed capable of dealing with it, since all except her Master had already pulled themselves out of it and were already beginning to recover, artificially increasing their blood flow by cycling their chakra, but her Master had lost too much blood and was struggling to shake its hold. He was on the brink of passing out.

The glowing-hands-friend had rapidly rotated between each of them, doing what they could for each of their worst injuries, just enough to keep them alive. It wasn't just the time press; they definitely didn't have enough chakra.

She nosed her Master a little more insistently. He blinked at her through hazy eyes.

_Urgency, movement, hide-fight_. She growled and willed him to understand. The others tensed at the sound but didn't pull any moves.

"Ah, right, you're right," he muttered, blinking repeatedly. " 's get moving, defensible location…"

She growled again, agreeing, and took a step back. Dropping to her elbows, she dipped the tips of her wings down and offered them her back, blood and burns and all. They needed to hurry, and she was probably fastest of them all as they were.

The friends shared a round of looks.

"Go'n," her Master winced at the sight of her back but still grunted out the words. "Neko-chan's a friend. You can trust her."

That seemed to be good enough for them. It was good enough for her to ignore the searing points of pain where they made contact with her wounds. She appreciated the way they did their best to avoid the worst patches as they helped each other up.

Pushing herself to her feet, she carefully folded her wings partway, shielding and steadying her passengers. She reoriented herself with the approaching swarms, turned, and dove into the shadows of the forest.

She carried them a few miles away, far enough to keep them out of the range of the fighting, and found them a cliffside crevice to hide in. The friends clambered off once she'd inspected the interior for inhabitants. There were a few old animals bones that might have once been a bear's meal, but nothing had disturbed the place for a long time since.

Once she'd made sure none of them were about to keel over and die, she turned back towards the entryway.

"Where are you going?"

She paused and spared a glance over her shoulder.

The tall-friend had been the one to speak. He was propped up against a wall, one arm cradling his ribcage, hastily bandaged feet stretched out in front of him. The colored marks on his white mask were nearly black in the cave's shadows.

Did he think that they were only pausing in their escape to regroup? Admittedly, it was a fair assumption to make- if they were outmatched, that is. As it were, they were not. They were, however, very much injured. The best course of action in this case would be to eliminate the threat, properly administer emergency treatment, and then return to base- wherever that was for them. She would have to get directions later.

Now, how to convey that without her Master to interpret? He had succumbed to the drop from the adrenaline high during the trip, but was no longer in danger from shock. The glowing-hands-friend had pressed their hands to his chest and helped circulate his blood and chakra for him, as well as done something she suspected had helped boost his blood levels.

Then again, the friends were not her Master. She did not answer to them.

_Live_, he'd commanded.

She was making sure they lived.

She tilted her head at the tall-friend, hoping they'd be smart enough to extrapolate just a little. She looked at them, looked back the way they came, looked at them again.

"There's too many."

She was not asking _permission_. _Permission_ did not come from _him_.

Her _Master_ had already given her permission. Tacitly.

Besides, she wouldn't be bull-charging the swarm. The forest was her element. The sky was her element. They knew not her true strength.

She looked at them, particularly pointedly at their injuries, looked at the forest, looked at the sky, looked at her Master, looked at them.

Blinked.

Twitched her wings, bared her teeth, flexed her claws.

She took another step towards the entryway.

The tall-friend stared at her for another beat, then slumped fully against the wall, relenting. They weren't going anywhere with those burns on those feet, and neither was the uncertain-friend with his shattered left leg. The glowing-hands-friend was out of chakra but had pulled out supplies that smelt of antiseptic and bitter medicine and would need time. And her Master was completely out.

This was their best course of action and they all knew it.

"Be careful out there."

She blinked again in response, slightly confused by the strange wording but understanding the gist of the meaning. She would return soon enough.

Bounding into the forest, she singled out the largest tree in the vicinity and headed straight for it, then _up_ it, not bothering to use her claws. She reached the two-thirds point and leaped- wings lifting, opening, flaring, and she spiraled into the air on a thermal. The muscles in her back protested severely and blatantly, but she ignored them for the moment. It was midday and warm. She leveled out at a few hundred feet, still easily visible to those below and plenty eye-catching with her size, and circled back towards the swarm in a deliberately curving path.

They spotted her quickly. With the facility destroyed and the current state of affairs, her standing with them would be dubious at best. They would likely act first and question later, if they didn't know what she was. If they mistook her for a fodder-creature again, well. It had been offensive enough the first time. It had also been damning enough, though they were damned either way. She had a true Master now, after all, and it didn't seem like he very much liked them.

A barrage of sharpened steel- she tucked her wings and slipped through it with ease, letting the following blasts of hot air boost her forwards. The act-first mentality, then. Not even a simple chakra-reinforced throw, either; did they really think so little of her? Was her appearance not fear-striking? Granted, she was not nearly so horrendously disfigured as many of the others were, but this was truly a first.

Regardless, they had made their stance clear. She would respond in kind.

Gathering chakra at her mouth, she tucked in her wings, parted her massive jaws, and dropped towards her prey, a roar between her teeth.


	3. Chapter 3

Ahahahahahahahahahaha, whoops. Turns out studio is worse that I thought it would be this year. Just a heads up, I might not be able to post again 'til winter break or something. Sorry guys. In the mean time, feel free to reread chappies and tell me if you find any mistakes! Plus! In this chappie, we get some names! ;)

(Quick question, longer chapters or shorter?)

(And I don't wanna be one of _those_ people, but... follow, fave, review? Please?)

* * *

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

* * *

It was not so different from one of her usual hunts.

The greatest difference were the identities of her prey. Running down those that had tormented her for nearly as long as she could remember was… refreshing. Cathartic, perhaps, if she understood the word correctly. Besides that, there were also more targets than usual, but it mattered little beyond extending the range and duration of the hunt.

The three strongest of the facility- not really masters, but not Masters to her either, no, they'd failed to bind her to their will even as they'd bent her to it- were all already dead, from what she could tell. She'd noticed the lingering scents of them on the friends earlier, and guessed they must have dealt with them already. The remaining swarm were guards and handlers who ranged in strength, a few masters, and the occasional group of fodder-creatures that had happened to be outside at the time of the facility's destruction. A few lesser-creatures had popped out of the earth in some places, having managed to dig their way out from the upper levels, and only posed slightly more of a challenge than most guards. At one point, she returned to the place she'd dragged the others out herself and eliminated the three surviving expendables that had made it to the surface.

Slinking nimbly through the foliage, she paused, _one, two_, and dropped, silent death on silent paws, dispatching the harried squad in a few efficient strikes.

She'd taken to the ground again after circling and spitting lethality from above to draw all focus to trying to kill her. The muscles in her back and shoulders were severely damaged, and would not be carrying her again before some regeneration. Instead, she slipped through the shadows, predator to her prey, and fought only when she could not simply kill. She'd been forced into major confrontations several times, but they'd been nothing several more powerful attacks couldn't deal with. Chakra was not the issue here. Being injured, and receiving more injuries, was.

Working her jaw, she shook off the latest to be impaled on her massive canines and reached through her senses. These should have been the last ones. She was quite a distance from the facility now, since at one point the remaining prey had realized the futility of even attempting to salvage from the rubble, let alone fight her, and had scattered, abandoning the site. Her sensory range was quite large when she concentrated, though, so she could be sure she had not let any escape. Some were rather decent at hiding their signatures, so it took a second look to find them, but as far as she could tell there were no more survivors.

A flicker of something just past the edge of her range caught her attention. Surprised, she focused on it. It was decently muted, and had already been outside her range before she began hunting, so she'd not picked up on it before because she'd not expected anyone to have already begun running. Now that she was paying attention, though, she immediately recognized the signatures.

Turning her head in the direction of the cluster of presences, she stared for a long moment.

Considered.

Rounding on her heel, she slipped into the shadows of the forest canopy once more and made a beeline for the cluster.

* * *

The red-masters.

What were they doing so far away from the facility?

She scanned them, eyes narrowed. Clothes rumpled, fear-reek- and kunai in hand. A second scenting confirmed her suspicions- the tiniest whiff of the shared scent that her Master and his friends carried, originating from several pieces of paper. Given her Master's persistence in having her return with him, they'd probably also gotten the red-masters out, who, in turn, had probably gone willingly; all the red-masters had been captured and coerced into service, each held hostage against one another. That threat had not been empty- their numbers had easily halved and then dwindled over the years.

There were five of them in total, huddled in the hollow of an ancient tree's dead husk. Eyes darting, muscles tensed, they were clearly on guard, ready to bolt at any notice. None were debilitatingly injured, though, so why had they not yet gone? It was out of character. Were they waiting for the friends? They had not gone to aid the friends, though that was hardly surprising, weak, selfish things that they were.

Just another half-step, a tilt of her head, a twist of her paw, a snap of her teeth-

Her jaws parted, itching to close down on and tear into their dirty, backstabbing flesh even as she drew the air over her glands to triple-check the scents they carried and listened with half an ear to their muted conversations.

She mulled over her options. She could kill them all, of course. In fact, she ought to, and for more reasons than one. But if the friends wanted them alive, did that also mean her Master would? He could not have known about them beforehand, trapped together as the two of them had been. No red-masters had visited in the time he'd been there. They rarely did, were usually holed up in some other room to scribble away instead.

Should she capture them, then, fetch them back for her Master the way that the masters had done? There was a slight issue of _how_, since she was optimized for elimination, not retrieval. She certainly wasn't going to be carrying them on her back. Perhaps she could simply hold them all by a limb? But no, that might work when she was flying, since squirming would be deterred by the height of the drop, but on the ground she'd need all her paws, and holding so many in her mouth at once would inevitably put a few limbs too close to her neck for comfort.

She'd herd them, then. Drive them back towards the friends and her Master. They weren't that far off, just over three miles away. She could even see the edge of the cliff peeking through a gap in the trees.

Course of action decided, she made her way around the tree husk so that it was lined up between her and the cliff. A pair had sidled their way out of the cramped hollow and were murmuring in low tones- _late… too long… not going back… leave… Konoha_\- beside the large split in the side.

Convenient.

Gliding forward on padded paws, she made herself known.

* * *

_One step, two_.

Eight smooth paces placed her clearly in view.

Neither set of darting eyes noticed her.

She waited for only a moment. Deliberately raising a hindpaw, she brought it down on a suitably large fallen branch.

The crack was highly satisfying. It almost equalled the volume of a broken bone.

The murmuring cut off abruptly, both inside and outside the tree husk. Neither of the pair outside were breathing. Slowly, ever so slowly, their heads turned to face her, eyes wide and sclera prominently showing. Inside the tree, she could see the remaining three doing much the same.

Five pairs of blue-violet eyes met starburst purple-gold.

She curled her lips into a soundless snarl.

They started breathing again, ragged and fearful and heartbeats hummingbird-fast.

Oh, yes. No misidentification here. They knew exactly what she was.

After all, they had been the ones to cut her open and carve the 'masterpiece' seal into each and every bone in her body.

She lunged, _left-right,_ into a crouch, flared her wings wide, whip-lashed her tail, _roared_-

-and pounced.

"_Run!_"

The high-pitched shrieks of prey faced with the horrible potentials of their imminent doom pierced the still air of the forest (because that was what she was to them, yes, the horror they'd molded with their own, selfish hands) as the five red-masters turned tail and bolted.

They knew there was no fighting her.

They knew there was no hope.

Still they fled, as disgustingly terrified of death as ever.

She let them get a lead on her, allowed them to pull ahead until she was lost to the foliage and the fear of not-knowing intruded their every thought and motion. When they strayed from the target, she'd burst in from one side or another, corralling them back, though not too obviously, letting them drift a bit erratically lest they notice and attempt a desperate break. She snapped at their hands and feet, ravaged the branches and patches of dirt they pushed off, brushed glancing blows with her tail on her side-charges. They knew she was toying with them, knew and despaired and did not infer her actions might have ulterior motives.

Still they fled.

They burst into the clearing at the base of the cliff face and screeched to a halt. At the top of the cliff, the uncertain-friend shuffled into view, weight fully on one leg, and looked down at them.

The red-masters' scents were a riot of emotion.

_Terror, panic, surprise, disbelief, overwhelming relief_-

She barged into the clearing in a blast of wind and leaves and wild vindication, calling out her return to her Master, conscious or not, as she slammed one last landing of dust and ruptured earth into the ground.

The red-masters scrambled back, squeezing noises of alarm from their throats and shooting desperate looks at the uncertain-friend.

She eyed them emotionlessly, huffed a full breath, more winded from her wounds than the run, and primly sat down in the epicenter of her small, fragmented crater, paws tucked neatly under the curl of her tail. She favored them with a bland stare.

The uncertain-friend dropped down from the top of the cliff where they'd presumably been keeping a watch and stuck a clean landing despite only using one leg. They barely had a chance to straighten before the red-masters were flocking around the friend, grasping at straws in what they perceived to be a doomed situation.

"Thank heavens!" the oldest red-master gasped, seemingly on the verge of fury-and-stress-induced tears, for all the good they would do him. "This monster- it's one of the experiments we told you about! It's the worst one- call it the divine beast- kill us all- hurry and-"

The uncertain-friend looked at her, then back at the red-masters, breathless and tensed for death on either side. They directed their words to the oldest red-master, one of the last of the leaders among the red-masters.

"We found and released our taichou from the lower levels. He established that the… divine beast, was a friendly."

The oldest red-master blinked, nonplussed. He abruptly reeled back in disbelief. "Are you out of your minds?! That _thing_ can't be reasoned with! Its higher-level thinking has been completely compromised by the oversaturation of foreign chakra! The only thing it knows how to do is butcher everything in its path!"

This time the uncertain-friend didn't bother to shoot a hesitant glance at her. "It helped us escape from the facility when the self-destruct was initiated. We would be dead without it."

"Impossible," the oldest red-master insisted. "It's clever, yes, but the only thing it has any interest in is carnage. No doubt it had recognized your strength and is trying to get you to let your guards down. That thing will kill us all, given the chance!"

The oldest red-master turned back around and thrust an accusatory finger in her direction. She didn't bother blinking. He was lucky she'd already killed all the other guards and keepers and creatures and masters, he was making such a racket. "Don't be fooled! What could it possibly gain from helping you? Maybe it helped you before so you would free it. But there's no restraints to bind it now, it can go wherever it wants! Why would it bother sticking around unless it was after your blood?"

A fair argument, in theory.

Why did they always think she was a bloodthirsty thing? She killed on orders. They of all people ought to know that. Evidently they didn't know- didn't _understand_ anything about her. _He_ didn't understand anything about her.

Master understood.

She had chosen her Master, just as the legendary weapons in the tales he'd shared with her had. She would go where he went, do as he bade, kill in his name. She didn't need anything else.

She trusted her Master.

Did his friend trust him too?

She felt the weight of the uncertain-friend's gaze on her again, but it was fleeting.

"Taichou is rarely wrong. As for reasoning, well. Didn't you yourself just say that there is no reasoning with it? It's fine if it's on a whim. It's a friendly right now, and we will treat it as such until given reason otherwise." The oldest red-master opened his mouth to protest again, perhaps lambast them with more insults to their intelligence, but the uncertain-friend was having none of it now. "All of us suffered debilitating injuries during the altercations. If it wanted to kill us, it could have done so. It has not. We will need its help to return to Konoha. So long as it chooses to continue to aid us, it will come with us." The uncertain-friend tilted their head. "Will that be a problem?"

The four other red-masters were fidgeting nervously, none daring to take their eyes off her for more than stolen glances at their elder and the uncertain-friend. The sour reek of their fear clogged her scent glands. She wrinkled her nose in displeasure. They only fidgeted more in reaction, constantly inching further away from her and towards the illusion of safety distance granted.

The oldest red-master's gaze darted between her and the uncertain-friend, and she watched as the rising panic and hysteria-induced anger was forcibly suppressed into something grimly determined. She did not like the look of it. She did not like the familiarity of it.

"Fine," he groused, critically running his eyes over her, obviously making note of the singed patches and splotches of darker and lighter areas on her coat. "But you're a fool if you think this won't end badly."

The uncertain-friend didn't bother deigning that with a response. Turning on their heel, they slipped into the crevice in the cliff face. The red-masters practically dove in after them.

Disliking the fact that those displaying such thinly veiled hostility (towards her, at least) were in close quarters with her Master, she quickly rose and ducked into the cavern after them, unconcerned with keeping a watch. It was no longer necessary.

Edging her significant form through the narrow gap, she tailed the others into the dark space, watching the red-masters. Just as they recognized her, she recognized them as well.

The oldest red-master was middle-aged, she knew, though no loss of color to his brilliantly scarlet hair gave away any accurate estimate to his true age. He was a man of calculations; he was the one who picked the pawns when the high-masters had played their games, doing his best to preserve as many of his people as possible, and if not, then the more valuable ones. She'd once seen him sacrifice a sick and dying child of theirs for mercy on an able-bodied adult over a mistake on a seal. He made the hard decisions, and was both respected and hated by the other red-masters for it.

The woman red-master never raised her voice. She spoke in a neutral tone, and went untouched by the guards and keepers and other masters despite being female. From what she could understand of the seals, the woman was the most skilled of all the red-masters once the first-oldest, a man with hair more like rust-streaked steel than fire, had died. When the other red-masters seemed close to crumbling, she was the one there with a featherlight touch or low-toned murmur.

The boy red-master was the quietest. He spoke only to the woman and the creatures when no one else was around, and gave single-phrase responses to the oldest. He cried a lot. He was also the last of the useless red-masters, the ones that were not masters at all, and did not work the creatures. He stopped trying to touch them, too, after one bit two fingers off of his left hand.

The angry red-master was the loudest and quickest to work into a fit. He reeked of hatred always. His hands were cruel, painful things, even behind the horsehair and wood of his ink brushes, trailing fire in their wakes. He burned. He resented. He was helpless. He turned around and poured all his hateful, burning resentment on the creatures because he was helpless against his true tormentors. She did not like him. She disliked him.

The cold red-master never participated in a conversation unrelated to their sealwork or immediate needs. He never attempted to comfort the others. He behaved the most neutrally to the guards and keepers and other masters, even more flatly and emotionlessly than the woman, and often used his free time to sit before the bars of one cell or another, staring at the creatures within. Perhaps he was fascinated. Perhaps he pitied them. Perhaps he had nothing better to do. Once, she'd nudged at the strange sensation surrounding his mind, and found a seal of his own there. He'd locked himself up and thrown away the key. Smart man.

Looking at them now, still pulled together in a sloppy half-forgotten formation despite being among allies, she did not like what she saw. Their minds were a feebler kind; the masters had been careful to take the strong-but-not-too-strong, those that they could bend a little without breaking. And they had bent. Hadn't snapped, surprisingly enough, but the damage from forcing them into line was enough. They clung to each other, pressed into each other until they'd fit together, pieces of a whole, as they had been, and shied away from the rest of the world, the world that might as well have not existed for them the last several years for all the aid it had spared them.

They would not trust.

They could not be trusted.

She did not trust them.

The uncertain-friend communicated something to the glowing-hands-friend in a flurry of hand signs that were responded to in kind. The red-masters watched the exchange. She watched the red-masters.

She managed to edge herself between her Master and the red-masters in the meantime. His face had been covered by a mask just like the other friends wore, bone-white and wolf-like and painted with deep electric-blue markings the color of stark lightning under its eyes and across its cheeks and forehead. It was less strange than she might have thought it could be, since they'd lived together in near-complete darkness for much of the time they'd known each other.

At long last, though in truth it was only a few minutes, the glowing-hands-friend swept up the last of their supplies- already packed and ready to go- and the pair swept the area clean of all signs of use. The tall-friend was woken from a light doze with a single touch to the shoulder, who looked at her, and she looked at them, and they nodded at her, and she dipped her head in acknowledgement. She had returned successful from her hunt, and they were in the clear for now.

Her Master remained unconscious.

When the friends were ready, she crouched and let them climb up onto her back once more. No longer focused on the other friends' hurts, the glowing-hands-friend immediately pressed their hands to the ravaged flesh of her back and began doing something that was warm and cool and painful and soothing all at once. She purred brief appreciation before turning her gaze to the red-masters as the other friends settled themselves out of the way of her wings. The oldest red-master took a wary step forward.

For an instant, she considered standing up and leaving right there, forcing them to run on their own power. They wouldn't be able to keep up, though, and she had no intentions to reduce her pace when her Master needed to get proper medical care. Staring the red-masters down with distaste, she resigned herself to the inevitable. She would have to trust the friends to monitor them.

The red-masters tentatively approached, the oldest in the lead. They weren't nearly so careful of her wounds as the friends, prioritizing getting a good grip over avoiding agitating sluggishly oozing injuries, though they at least didn't go out of their way to do so. Nine passengers made for a squeeze, even when this form stood nearly twenty feet at the shoulder. She rolled her shoulders, disgruntled, testing that her burden wouldn't dislodge themselves. None slipped.

In the moment of imbalance as she rose to her feet, they struck.

The oldest made the first move. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him grip his single kunai, wrap it in white-blue wind, and plunge it towards an area along her spine where her guard hairs had been completely scorched away.

It never reached.

The tall-friend gripped the oldest red-master's wrist tight enough for her to hear the bones grind together. They might have spoken, asked what the red-master thought he was doing, but didn't get the chance as the woman and the cold red-masters lunged forward as well, the first aiming an open palm at the tall-friend's hand and the second spinning to plant his own kunai between the ribs in her left flank. The tall-friend was forced to react, dragging the oldest forward so that the woman's palm hit his back and thrusting a jab into his throat that had him choking the half second before he passed out. The boy had thrown himself to cover the cold one even before the glowing-hands-friend moved to stop him and took the punch straight on his cross-armed block. Both skinny arms snapped under the force. Up by her shoulder blades, where the angry red-master had somehow managed to get in the disarray, starburst purple-gold met hateful blue-violet. He sneered back at her heavy gaze as he stabbed his own kunai down, down, sharpened point trained directly on her neck-

Metal screeched as the uncertain-friend turned it aside with their own blade. The kunai, deflected off-course, drove deep into the hard flesh of her trapezius instead of through her spinal column.

She snarled in irritation.

Swiftly folding her wings carefully to cradle the friends, she swung her head around to pluck the uncertain-friend up from his precarious position on her neck and then lashed the length of her body like a whip, dislodging the red-masters with impetus. They shot from her back like scattered rain, and careened into the stone walls of the cavern with resounding impacts. If they hadn't been knocked out during the scuffle, they certainly were out now.

She released the scruff of uncertain-friend's armor to drop him carefully to the ground before prodding the red-masters' presences with her sense to ensure they weren't faking. The friends, slightly disoriented and injuries a bit jostled, were not much worse for wear, though steadied themselves against her back for a moment to get their bearings. She obligingly held still, fully content to trust them her back after that display.

"Well, fuck," the uncertain-friend muttered from where they'd seated themself on the ground between her front paws. They seemed entirely unconcerned at the way her claws were grinding into the stone floor as she flexed them in contemplation. "And here I thought we could all be friends."

Her ear flicked, back, forth. Had they really thought so? Had she made a mistake?

"Ah, right," the uncertain-friend tilted their head back and extended a hand, carefully patting her blood-stained chin. "Thanks for not throwing me with them."

She blinked at them, nonplussed, and decided that reacting to a threat could not have been a bad thing.

"Regardless, we still need to bring them back with us." The glowing-hands-friend slipped off her back and approached the boy red-master, leaning down to examine the broken arms. "Perhaps this is for the better. We would only waste time arguing." Straightening, they glanced at the other slumped red-masters. "I will administer first-aid, and then we will leave. I will ensure they remain unconscious for the remainder of our mission."

She had no complaints with those arrangements.

None of the others did, for that matter.

The red-masters were bandaged and bone-set before being thoroughly trussed up, with special attention paid to their hands. She presumed this had to do with those strange gestures the guards and keepers and masters so often made when channelling chakra. They were also stripped of their equipment, which was dumped into a spare storage seal. A few minutes, and the friends clambered back on so they could really, finally leave.

They departed the cave under the pale orange tones of the first hints of sunset. The glowing-hands-friend pointed out directions and landmarks, and explained the paths that they could take- one for subtlety and one for speed. The friends and her Master had come the subtle way, and they were now leaving the speedy way. Once the sun had fully set, the tall-friend pointed out constellations for her to navigate by before succumbing to their exhaustion, physical and chakra, and the drop from the adrenaline high alongside the other friends.

According to the glowing-hands-friend, they were currently near a place called the Mountains' Graveyard. The return journey would last maybe a week in total, at their current speed and accounting for the varying terrain. The first three to four days would take them to the border of the Land of Fire. The latter one to three would bring them to the place they called Konohagakure, their place of origin, depending on how she fared among the apparently unique environment dominated by 'Hashirama trees,' as well as the reception they received from the border guard and patrols. This was all also under the assumption that they ran into no further complications, such as missing-nin or bandits.

She disliked the time estimates. The scent of blood clung strongly to each of them. She knew she'd be able to move faster if not for her injuries; she was currently only able to maintain something around two-thirds of her usual long-distance speed. The only thing that she could identify that might cut their travel time shorter was removing any rest time inserted into the estimations. She did not need sleep; she was physically incapable of it. In fact, it was likely that it would kill her if she ever did fall into its clutches. The friends could rest as she carried them and the red-masters were out anyways.

And so she ran.

She ran through a land of dark undergrowth and soaring bones.

She ran through deep shadows and across bridges of fragmented skeletons.

She ran up sides of mountains and down others until the great white remains of ancient beasts disappeared into the distance.

She ran through the night, and into the next day through to the evening.

The glowing-hands-friend woke when the sky stained the color of flames once more, and roused the tall-friend and the uncertain-friend. She stopped by the side of a gushing river rapids and let the friends clamber down.

The rapids flowed for quite a ways in either direction, and they didn't have the time to spare searching for a slower stretch, so they picked out a relatively flat, shallow stretch and made do.

The friends removed the red-masters from her back and dunked them into the water until they'd stopped staining it rust-red. None woke during the process. Clearly the glowing-hands-friend was very good at what they did. The red-masters were draped on an easily visible piece of the bank under the fading daylight.

With practiced motions, the friends stripped out of their gear and cleaned it of blood and dirt and set it all aside to dry, then repeated the process with their clothes. The same was done with her Master's clothes and a set of weapons and armor that smelled of him. They must have been retrieved from the facility at some point.

Hands tightly clenched in the blood-matted fur of her coat, they then directed her into the river, her Master carefully laid out on her back. The water was thankfully refreshingly cool rather than flesh-numbing, and while the friends were injured and weakened, they were fully capable of holding onto her and keeping upriver of her so she could catch them if a particularly strong current grabbed them.

Soaking third-degree burns in water for extended periods of time was very much not advised, but they were covered in battle grime and the accumulated filth of days' worth of rigorous exercise, which was an even worse idea to let sit in _any_ of their wounds. They scrubbed the dried blood and grime from skin and carefully rinsed it from all wounds until their chilled skin pinked redness and their hair was several shades lighter. They did the same for her Master, then pulled him out at the shore and insisted on washing her, too. She'd seen the logic in reducing trackable scents and complied.

She'd laid down in the water beside the bank, occasionally moving to deeper pools as directed to dip under or roll to flush out the dislodged filth. The glowing-hands-friend had taken the upstream side this time, being the least impaired and most qualified, to clean out the worst of the damage to her back, while the other two waded through the calm patch of water created by the shield of her bulk to tend to the stab wound to her flank and help clean the rest of her.

When they were done with her, the white in her paws and stripes were visible once more, and the friends were only slightly surprised by the clusters of feathers that fletched stretches of her coat. The tall-friend called her 'reverse albino'. The glowing-hands-friend called her 'melanistic'. The uncertain-friend called her 'fucking badass'. She understood the conveyed 'abnormal'. She was not bothered, though, because none spoke with ill-meaning.

She dried them all off with a carefully controlled stream of fire-breath pointed to the earth, etching a ring of grassfire around each of them to warm both them and surrounding air up in the quickly falling twilight. Once dry, wounds were redressed, changes of clothes were unsealed and pulled on, and the glowing-hands-friend left to secure a perimeter and lay traps while the other two friends rummaged through their supplies for a meal.

The glowing-hands-friend returned with a freshly killed rabbit that they gutted, skinned, and lightly burned- 'cooking,' they called it, and it did look a bit like what the masters would sometimes eat- before directly passing it over to her, staring at her with a strange intensity, while the friends gnawed through several scentless sticks of something. They offered her two of those, too, and she accepted. The sticks were just as tasteless as they smelled, but were still a large step up from what rubbish the facility tossed her on a good day.

She turned down the other offered sticks when the friends saw how easily she took to them, unable to communicate the lack of need. They gave apologies- _apologies_\- for not being able to provide anything else, nor what they perceived to be enough for her body size, and behaved correspondingly concerned, and she found herself thinking how inconvenient it was to be unable to explain things to them.

Throughout the exchange, the glowing-hands-friend did quite a bit of staring at her, though it was discreet. Belatedly, she realized that they had been there, too, when she'd bound herself to her Master- had seen the seals, had seen her appearance before the transformation. Her normal form occasionally got her strange looks of moroseness and internal conflict from new-comer creatures and guards and keepers, though they disappeared quickly enough given time. The looks the glowing-hands-friend was giving her now reminded her slightly of those, though these looks were more morose and less conflicted. She didn't entirely understand, but then, she would learn. This was the world that her Master lived, the one that he saw, and now that she thought of it, he'd given her a few similar looks too, hadn't he? Yes, she would learn this later, for her Master's sake. She should not be the cause of those heavier expressions he made, not when she could avoid it.

The friends had removed the bone-masks to wash and eat, and she was finally able to identify them as individuals. The glowing-hands-friend was female, while the other two were male. They 'introduced' themselves to her. She carefully committed the information to memory.

The glowing-hands-friend's moniker was Fukuro- 'owl'. She was female, and was the medic of the team, which her Master, Zouge, 'ivory', led. She was unusually pretty by common standards, probably in her early twenties, with black hair and green eyes and pink-pale skin, and made use of medical techniques in battle in a precision-oriented style. Her mask was an owl, marked with an outside-to-inside pair of curving green crescents around the outsides of the large circular eyeholes.

The tall-friend was Dobutsu, 'animal'. Male. He was the long-ranged ninjutsu fighter, appearing around the same age as Fukuro, and used weighted chains and non-standard neko-te in addition to the standard-issue gear the friends were equipped with. A shock of short, rich brown hair stuck up at straight angles from his head, matching in shade with his eyes. He wore a hyena mask marked with the same brown in outlining streaks along the bottom edges of jagged teeth, sharp-cut eyeholes, and a rounded splotch centered on a blunted muzzle.

The uncertain-friend was Hai, 'ash'. Also male. He was the youngest of the friends, looking to be in his late teens and in training for a close-combat oriented specialty, and the least stoic of them. Fine eyelashes framed droopy pale-brown eyes, and black-brown hair was cut in short, wavy locks. His mask was of a raccoon's, marked in rusty orange in a stripe up the muzzle that flowed up between two oblong ovals hanging lowly around the eyeholes to branch into a horizontal line across the brow.

And then her Master woke up.

He stirred partway through the meal, blinked open bleary eyes, unconsciously checked the chakra signatures in his vicinity, and immediately attempted to get up. Fukuro shut down that course of action quickly enough with a firm hand to his sternum. He turned blinking bleary eyes at her then, before becoming self-aware enough to take in his surroundings. The friends, the forest canopy, the small fire, the sun-streaked sky, the red-masters- and then her.

She'd curled up around him, cushioning him from the ground with her flank, so he'd not been able to get a good look at her immediately. He had to crane his head up and back to find her face.

Something equally warm and delighted sparked in her chest when silver-grey met purple-gold starbursts and utterly lit up.

It immediately wilted when he seemed to finally take in the rest of her and a tense line rose in the set of his shoulders.

"You…"

She waited for the fear, the disgust, even the neutral disturbed expression, or perhaps anger at the deception. He could see her inhumanity in all its terrible truth now.

"You're _hurt_."

It was a murmur, half a whisper, that almost sounded like it hurt him to speak it despite the clear effort to maintain a neutral tone, and she found herself wondering how she could have ever thought her Master would react in a way her small fragment of world perception could predict.

She lowered her head into his reach and closed her eyes against the warm palms that threaded themselves through the fur of her face, her forehead, her ears, her neck, her ruff, calming, soothing. She remembered what he'd said about dogs. Leaning into the touch, she nuzzled into his arms and chest, pausing a moment to check on the terrible wound in his gut, before properly burying her face into his torso in the fashion of canines, leaving the most vulnerable parts of her body completely exposed to him, literally in his hands. She was anxious to reaffirm her allegiance to him in the presence of his friends so that they knew she would aid them by extension through her Master, though a greater part of her was eager to do so in order to merely confirm things for herself, things that she herself knew she wanted to know but did not know how to phrase even if she could speak.

"Third degree burns," Fukuro agreed from the side. "Worse than any of ours by several times- larger, anyways. She took the brunt of the explosion. Debris in the wounds, some deeper gashes from where sharper rocks dug in when she was holding the earth up around us, grind damage to bones. Spine seems okay for the most part, though the skin is broken around several vertebrae."

Phantom fire burned the span of her back, yes. She was aware of it, and was aware that carrying passengers on her back had only aggravated it, so she'd identified it as recognized and accounted for and dismissed the sensation to a back corner of her mind. The whole of her body burned and ached, so she'd repeated the process for every other injury. Pain was useful as an indicator, an alert system for damage, but irrelevant beyond that. She did not pay it more attention than it deserved.

"But you can't do any more," her Master surmised, wearily exhaling a breath.

"Too large of an injury," Fukuro agreed apologetically. "We're all in deep shit at the moment. I'm low on basic supplies, too. None of us have any chakra to spare, and we're all starting to crash from the chakra exhaustion. Not to even get started with _you_, infection has already started setting into _all_ of our burns and I can't do anything about it. It'll be a miracle to make it back without our wounds worsening. And that's not even counting if I managed to remove enough of the poison previously to minimize the effects."

She nosed at her Master's face, needing to tell them all something and not sure how to go about it.

And then she realized that her Master couldn't _really_ speak with her, either. Not fluently, and not as she was now. But then he hadn't needed speech to understand her in the beginning. He just _understood_.

And actually tried. And guessed a lot.

That was good enough for her.

"Neko-chan?" He laid a placating hand on the bridge of her nose. She couldn't tell if he was steadying her or himself more. "Something up?"

She growled.

"Uh, want to tell us something?"

A purr. The others watched, tired but still managing curious attention.

"Something to do with… our injuries?"

A hesitation, then a purr.

"With yours?"

A growl.

"With _just_ ours." The intricacies of grammar.

A purr.

He blinked rapidly for a moment. "Ah, right, you have that technique of yours. But-" he shot her a worried glance and a pointed look to her back, "-you're not in much condition to be transferring more infections to yourself."

She growled, nudging his arm in a rather insistent way.

"No, you're in bad shape too, probably worse off than the rest of us if we count long-term ailments. No more consuming." He held her with a stern look, and she dropped her gaze in submission after only half a beat, uninterested in defying him.

That didn't change the fact that they had a problem, though.

Considering their options, she carefully shifted her bulk, telegraphing her intent to rise. Her Master obligingly moved over so that he would not be dumped into the dirt upon the loss of her support. Pushing herself to her feet, she looked at him, looked in the direction they had been travelling before stopping, looked at him, turned back to the unmarked path and took a deliberate three steps, looked back at him.

"Soon," Fukuro was the one to respond, her Master leaning heavily on her supporting arm. He was already starting to sweat from exertion. "Once you've rested a little more. At least another two hours. You ran almost twenty-three hours straight on top of three of combat."

Grunting dismissively, she growled low and swung her head back and forth in the way she'd sometimes seen other humans respond in the negative. Her stamina was fine, and she was not capable of sleep. There was no need to prolong things- in fact, it was quite inadvisable. She shuffled her wings and paws restlessly, trying to think of a way to convey that she did not have one of the basic needs of mammals.

Her Master frowned. "Speaking of rest, now that I think of it… In all the time we spent together in that cage, I don't think I've ever seen you sleep before, Neko-chan."

Her Master's ability to make leaps in logic was _wonderful_. She purred urgently in encouragement.

"Do you…" he hesitated, clearly doubtful at the, to them, absurd conclusion from that piece of information. "Do you just not need it?"

More or less. Another purr.

He furrowed his brows at her, struggled for a brief moment, then seemed to have come to terms with another abnormality of hers. "Which means… Huh. Okay. So what you're trying to say is that we don't have to sit here and waste potential travel time." He blinked again. "I guess this means that you've got some sort of heightened recovery rate? Or something related? So your stamina is still good, too?"

Her purr was a deep, continuous thrum in her chest, excited as she was by such accurate guesses. Some of the logic was a bit murky, but the gist of them was close and the conclusions drawn were relatively accurate. She ambled back to her Master's side and enthusiastically pressed her nose to his shoulder in confirmation.

He chuckled lightly, then wheezed at the exertion necessary for the act. Fukuro tightened her grip on his arm in warning, but he just patted the hand distractedly.

"Alright, then. We'll leave once we've finished up here."

They didn't bother waking the red-masters up. It wasn't worth the trouble, and they didn't have enough rations to feed all of them for a week. Fukuro cast some sort of weakened stasis technique over them, calmly commented that a few days without food wouldn't hurt them any more than their time in the facility might have, being mostly adults and at least partially trained shinobi as they were, and that was that.

Having finished her meal first, Fukuro looked at her ravaged back, looked at the meagre remains of the rolls of bandages in her hands, looked at her back, and turned around and commandeered the freshly washed clothes. None of the others made any move to stop her. Once the clothes had been sufficiently wrung of moisture, Fukuro cut them up with a kunai and covered her back wounds with them, somehow plastering them into place with a glow-technique or two.

"Is it okay for her to carry us with those?" Her Master watched the medic work, expression not quite letting his concern to surface.

"We don't have much of a choice," Dobutsu reminded him quietly. He had a pile of steel on one side of him and several neatly laid rows of freshly sharpened blades on the other, and a whetstone in hand.

"It's not the best thing for them," Fukuro answered, just as subdued, "but as long as we're careful to avoid the worst bits and move around as little as possible, they shouldn't get too much worse. Painful, of course, since I doubt we've got nearly enough painkillers to give her a dose large enough to help, but your Neko-chan here seems to be quite the tough one." Smoothing out a last piece of makeshift bandage, the medic carefully carded a hand through the thick fur of her shoulder. She turned her head to blink placidly at her in response.

Hai, the most free with his expressions and body language, even more so than even her Master, fidgeted in a distinctly distressed manner. "We could lay out the rest of our clothes on her back? Put some padding between us and her?"

"She'll need to cover at least another several hundred kilometers. We don't want her to get overheated, or to keep a layer of damp pressed up against the burns," Fukuro informed him.

"But then-"

She snorted and rose to pad a circle around the little group, testing how the fabric affected her movements. She bumped each of the friends lightly with her nose in passing and let a little purr rumble in her chest even as she huffed pointlessly large breaths out, trying to express the new type of warmth that had bloomed in her chest that she could not name. She'd never imagined there were so many emotions she hadn't known before- so many warmths.

Even Dobutsu twitched a lip in a piece of a smile at her. "She appears to be trying to tell us that she appreciates the concern, but it's not necessary."

Not in so many words, but that sounded about right. She purred a little more.

They packed up quickly after that, re-equipped their gear, erased all signs of their presence, and set off once more.

The red-masters had been resecured to her back, tied together side-to-side to be draped over her spine, alternating so that each found themselves cheek-to-cheek with a pair of feet on either side. They were such a hassle to drag along, but the friends wanted them brought so she complied with their wishes.

As they were being slung up on her back, though, she'd made a startling realization. They were no longer masters, in the sense that she'd dubbed those like them in the facility. They didn't have any power over her anymore, whether it be to have her strapped down and her seals recalibrated or to permit her a week of inactivity to allow rent flesh to close and regrow. In the past day, she had had many an opportunity to rend their flesh in return and spared them each time. They were no longer red-masters; they were merely red-ones.

Something settled in her with the epiphany.

Her other passengers were clearly exhausted still- physically, mentally, chakra-wise- but made a clear effort to stay awake for a little while to 'keep her company,' whatever that meant.

Her Master, having directly claimed the place at the height of her withers so he could talk to her, was laid out on his back, legs draped to either side of her neck. She could feel the way the wind stirred through her fur and his hair so that they mingled at her ruff, the way his heart beat weakly but steadily, the way his muscles clenched in pain at the mere action of breathing.

She ran faster.

Their journey was quiet, though, filled with the sounds of the night forest and the rushing air. She didn't take any detours. Being the most dangerous predator around had its perks; the wildlife got out of her way fast when she bothered to let them know she was coming.

"Neko-chan."

She rumbled a quiet response to let him know she was listening.

"I was thinking… You said you have no name?"

A purr. The other two were listening now, too.

"Well, I was thinking. About things that suit you. And I thought, the way you move through the forest, the way the night doesn't hamper you, the way you're here and moving but you're so quiet that maybe you were just a dream, a figment of my imagination that I dreamt up when I was delirious…" He trailed off, seeming to forget each fragment of his sentence as soon as it had been said, but still there, still awake, still thinking…

"Asuga."

It was sudden, but not abrupt; a murmur in the night.

She could feel the tentative twist to his lips, a hopeful smile in the making.

"I know I've been calling you Neko-chan, and it's fine as a nickname, but, 'bird that flies'... Or 'swift like wind.' I think it suits you."

She suspected he truly might have been slightly delirious at that point, but there was something more to it than what he was verbally saying, she sensed, as if thinking of deeper meanings and other such things, but she knew that he would tell her if it mattered, and in that moment, she didn't care.

Her Master had given her a name.

She had a name.

"Tasogare no Asuga," he breathed into the night, "Asuga of the Twilight. Yes- I think it suits you. What do you think?"

_Asuga_.

She purred, long and deep, and even opened her mouth to attempt to make some other sound, a more special sound to convey the more special meaning, but came up with a strange crooning note that echoed strangely clear in contrast to the more vibrating sounds she usually produced. Her Master laughed at the warped sound, weak but so so bright, and the friends might have made lightly amused noises in the background, too, though said nothing, letting them have their moment.

When the moment faded, left behind in another sigh of wind and shadow, her Master broke the peaceful silence that had fallen. "That's right," he murmured, voice faded more than ever, "I never did introduce myself properly, did I? How rude of me." Asuga's ears flicked back in his direction, perked up in rapt attention even as she held her pace steady, never faltering.

"Well, I suppose it's not good form to do this while we can't even look each other in the face, but it would be much more rude to not tell you at all." She could feel the smile in his words. "And the four of us are ANBU, one of the most elite groups of shinobi of our village, so we have monikers we go by for secrecy's sake. Dobutsu, Fukuro, and Hai are all monikers. Mine is Zouge."

Moonlight glimmered off his wild tussle of hair, and she was reminded once more of star souls and star-touched and decided he was all of those and none of those.

He was something better.

He was _real_.

"We're not supposed to tell anyone our real names while we're on duty, but it wouldn't be fair for me to give you a name and not tell you my real one, would it?" She didn't know about that, but if he thought so then it must be so.

"Besides," she felt his smile turn sharp-toothed and certain here, "I get the feeling you can keep a secret.

"When I'm wearing my mask, you've got to call me Zouge. But when I'm not, and it's just the two of us…" and there was teeth in the smile in his words now, fierce and genuine, "Call me Sakumo. Hatake Sakumo, of Konohagakure's Hatake Clan."

* * *

Notes:

The reason why the friends adjusted so easily to Asuga, going from wary to comfortable in her presence, is because they don't know much about her so far, because their taichou told them she could be trusted, and because they're highly capable killers themselves who have worked with large summons before, namely Sakumo's. There is a marked difference with the red-masters because, as the creators of her seals, they know what capacities she's intended to have, what she's done before, and that they're completely outmatched regardless as non-frontline combatants.

In something of a similar line of reasoning, Asuga's behavior is so openly demonstrative because she is making an effort in trying to communicate her intentions and really has no reliable baseline to compare against. She's also really young at the moment. Despite the lifetime of abuse and general lack of normal human socialization, she's not a completely introverted wreck because of her status as the 'divine beast'. That is to say, she's the most powerful and the most intelligent of the experiments, and she knows it, so she's obviously not going to behave like a terrified little thing around those she can easily thrash, especially since that would be a very blatant display of weakness and all the others would jump her at the first sign of that. The others recognized she was different, superior, and while not exactly shunned, she was left alone with a sort of basic reasoning that she should not be antagonized, which to them equated to staying far away when feeding time came around so she wouldn't misinterpret them as encroaching on what was hers, and doing their very best not to appear confrontational when they were all put together in a combat simulation or situation.

No, she is not a result of Uchiha Madara or Akatsuki or Orochimaru experimentation. I just don't think that they would have been the only ones to have recognized how conveniently secluded and avoided the area was. The facility was never aware of any other people in the Mountains' Graveyard. All the test subjects were imported from all over the Narutoverse, though primarily from either extremely rural areas or areas of conflict / affected by the Second Great Shinobi War.


	4. Chapter 4

Merry Christmas everyone! No, there's no double post, that's just my stupid butt forgetting to put in this little note for ya'll's. But yeah, sorry it's been a while, hope the usual 10k word length makes up for it to you guys!

-Original post time + 2 hours: document translation punctuation fixed, []= summons/ninken-speak.

* * *

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

* * *

Dawn saw them to the edge of the mountainous region, and noon through a transitory territory that ranged from younger forests to deep-cut valley ravines to long stretches of grasslands. "Borderlands," Hai had confirmed in a moment of lucidity, breathing harshly, skin flushed and radiating heat and skiness. "The southern end of the Land of Iron, between the Land of Rice and the Land of Waterfalls."

The friends were sick, and getting weaker. Fukuro, Dobutsu, and Hai floated in and out of consciousness, sometimes lucid, sometimes not, as the effects of the dregs of the poison wrought their damage. By mid-morning, the worst of the poison's effects seemed to have passed, and they twitched less in their fitful rest. Her Master- Zouge, Hatake, Sakumo, she reminded herself, and tried to decide if his introduction of the names meant that he wished her refer to him with one over 'Master'- had not woken again since falling into a restless unconsciousness around midnight.

She stopped only once. All the friends had been out cold. She'd paused in a small glade sheltered by sturdy, aged trees and attempted to consume some of their infections, only to find that each of the friends had positioned themselves in such as way that if she tried to reach them she would only end up dropping them. Propped up against the base of her neck, this was especially true for her Master.

Clever. As expected of her Master.

She gave up and moved on, determined to make up for lost time.

Early afternoon saw them into a region of more regular forests, if only in the fauna. The towering trunks were solid and could easily support great weights, though also felt different, if not exactly strange, to her chakra senses; more _vivacious_, for one, she supposed. From what she could scent, the territories claimed by the local predator and prey populations were more complex, as well, overlapping surprisingly frequently among even the apex predators- of which there were more than just a few species. It was confounding. She was surprised they didn't run across even one territorial dispute.

With the boost to her speed, Asuga was making better time than they'd anticipated. The next time Dobutsu had awoken, just after the beginnings in the shift of dominance in tree species, he'd taken one look at their surroundings and a whole layer of unseen tension had visibly evaporated from his signature. "The Land of Fire," he'd explained. Their homeland. Familiar territory. That explained it- the line of stronger moving chakra signals she felt coming up must be the outermost border patrols.

Dobutsu had glanced at the others and hesitated. The curdled scent of pus and rot and infection had risen around each of them once more, including herself. All the friends were burning up in fevers. Third-degree burns, especially in the quantities they'd received, were dangerous regardless of size.

And judging by the pattern of their chakra flow, the red-ones were beginning to rise towards consciousness.

"Don't stop," he'd decided, voice decisive even in its pained, breathless weakness. "Won't be able to, stay conscious 'til we reach… Incriminating- Can't speak, won't let you through… Out of time… Find other…" He succumbed to feversleep once more.

She reached the invisible line of patrols and kept going.

Instantly, she felt the nearest cluster of the signatures break off from its original path and move to surround and intercept. She'd been monitoring their movements while approaching, identifying the movement patterns. There was one hard line that several clusters followed openly, most likely the actual border. Behind it, a mess of clusters moved back and forth in an almost jumbled fashion, but on second take it was possible to see that the way they circled around and doubled back served to both cover all ground as well as to deceive stalking enemies and place the patrols in position to identify and get the jump on them. The circling clusters also served to provide immediately accessible scrambled backup for the hard-border's patrols.

The initial cluster took up positions surrounding her, moving with her and observing as she simply kept to her original straight-line path. With her passengers so out of it, she couldn't get any more directions, so they'd pointed her straight and told her what she'd had to cross on the way. Her stride was significant, and she could leap very far even without chakra reinforcement, so any canyons or rivers were simply traversed that way. The group seemed to realize this, recognizing the direction; the signatures sharply spiked with agitation.

For an instant, she thought they were going to attack, but then they dropped back, still following. A signal seemed to have been given. In the next moment, another three clusters from the soft-border homed in on her location and changed direction.

Huffing to herself, Asuga picked up the pace. She'd been holding steady at a speed she knew she could keep up for an almost indefinite time when not limited by injury, since she hadn't known exactly how far she still had to travel, but now they were in at least the latter half of the journey and she could afford the greater exertion. She easily outstripped the patrols now, slipping between them with an ease that seemed to alarm them.

Another two clusters moved forward from the reserve, these ones significantly faster than the previous.

Judging by the much more subtle presences their signatures registered as, Asuga decided they were probably close to on par with the friends, though not to her Master's level. They closed in from her front left and right, seeking to pincer her between them as the other four patrols moved up behind her in a solid wall. She was surrounded.

Dobutsu had said to not stop. She had no intentions of wasting time fighting them.

Putting on a burst of speed, she swiftly increased the distance between her and the rear assault, focusing instead on the greater threats.

The opening barrage of steel projectiles was deftly slipped through, though the speed and force with which they whistled by surprised her. It was the first time she had seen such levels of power and skill in the techniques. It would not do to underestimate these ones- but then Dobutsu had told her to go straight through, and he had to have known this would happen. Evidently these were their comrades- she could not hurt them. That meant that Dobutsu thought her capable of bypassing them without hurting them. Dobutsu and the friends were very competent and skilled. They would not miscalculate such a thing while knowing their comrades' skill level and having only witnessed a portion of her own. She would get through, and without hurting any of their comrades.

And then they were upon her.

Four figures burst into sight, two on each side, while the other four held back in the foliage, no doubt watching for an opening. Bone-white masks, form-fitting black underclothes, practical grey-white armor, straight-blades bared in assorted states of draw- yes, these were the friends' comrades. Friend-friends. Definitely didn't want to get into a fight with them.

Two swung their blades at her, short swords with longer reach than kunai. Behind them, the other two folded their hands together into familiar strange-signs.

She changed her trajectory on her next stride, propelling herself higher in a leap that was more pounce than jump so that she was skimming through the space above their heads as their blades were still flashing out in the beginnings of their arcs. Startled at another rapid increase in speed, they recovered quickly and dug in their heels, instantly killing their momentum and darting back after her. The remaining two in front of her finished making their strange-signs and attacked, one throwing out a large sheet of water that the other charged with a hurled bolt of lightning.

Normally, such an obviously non-lethal attack, high-powered and skillfully executed though it was, would be utterly useless against her in her semi-awakened state. However, they'd used lightning nature, and she was carrying injured passengers- she couldn't just shrug it off.

Raising her wings, careful not to jostle her burden, she snapped them forward in a sweeping gesture, tossing a concentrated maelstrom of wind blades to counter. They tore through the sheet easily and forced the oncoming two to dodge to the sides, sending spray outwards in all directions as she simply hopped through the gap left in the center of the point of impact.

She felt the moment they laid eyes on her friends. Surprise flashed through the two to attack her first, positioned behind her as they now were and with a better view of her back, and then the two in front, when she'd lifted her wings to attack. She'd been using them to ensure she didn't drop anyone, and had ended up shielding them from view as a side-effect.

The four friend-friends flitted back, out of range of the splash zone, chakra swirling in indecision.

She didn't bother stopping to wait for them.

When she analyzed their behavior, she could only come up with one reasonable explanation for the quick assault and just as rapid retreat. They'd most likely noticed the blood- (and possibly sick-) scent clinging to her easily enough, and recognized their comrades' scents as well. Assuming she'd attacked and injured them, they'd identified her as hostile and moved to either kill or capture. When they'd realized that she was carrying the friends, and possibly recognized the red-ones as well, they'd dropped the assault and moved back to regroup and reassess the situation.

Behind her, she could sense the friend-friends had come to a complete halt, most likely having a quick conversation. It was only a short pause before they were chasing after her again. This time, however, they maintained their distance, intentionally flaring their chakra in a pattern she guessed was supposed to mean something. Swiveling her head, she pinpointed the closest friend-friend and did her best to lock gazes with them through their mask, tilting her head and blinking slowly in what she hoped would convey her cluelessness. While she despised being seen as incompetent, it would also be okay if they thought she had missed the signal, or could not sense more than a vague impression of it. Much further behind them, the four initial patrols had broken off and returned to their original paths.

At least the friend-friends seemed to understand her meaning, and appeared satisfied that she both had no intentions to retaliate and recognized they were not an immediate threat. This time she was close enough to catch the flurry of hand signs rapidly exchanged between them. One of the friend-friends darted ahead, most likely to inform other comrades of the situation, and after a beat of hesitation, she slowed just enough to allow them to pull ahead. They were all heading towards the friends' home-base anyways- better to arrive announced than not, if the border confrontation was any indicator.

Apparently recognizing the gesture, the remaining members of the two patrols backed off fully and spread out in a loose formation around her, carefully maintaining a distance that read more as escort than assault. She appreciated the gesture, and allowed the one who had taken a position to the front of her to lead them onto a well-trafficked path, judging by scents if not by sight.

A few minutes more, and they broke from the trees onto an actual road- dirt and hard-packed and reeking of a dozen dozen scents she'd never come across before. She didn't let it distract her, though, instead adjusting direction to follow the leading comrade.

They'd dropped into the middle of the road, clearly indicating that they would not be expecting to encounter others using it. She dropped after them from the trees, pausing as she straightened up and glanced at the other friend-friends as they did the same. They'd come to a complete stop, and the leading friend-friend had turned to face her.

Reluctantly, she also stood her ground, and faced them, shuffling her paws agitatedly as she huffed and tried to convey her urgency. They'd demonstrated their lack of hostility, though, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to get into a fight that would jostle her passengers. She could feel the heat of their fevers against her own searing burns.

"You are trespassing on land under the sovereignty of the Land of Fire. Identify yourself and your affiliations."

She growled and chuffed, ears rapidly swiveling back and forth. How was she supposed to answer that? She chuffed some more, hoping that the lack of words would get her meaning across.

The surrounding friend-friends exchanged a round of looks at each other, one or two flicking a few hand signs between them. They stopped when the leader tried again.

"Are you a member of an advance force hostile to the Land of Fire?"

She growled and swung her head in a wide horizontal arc in the negative.

"Why are you in the company of shinobi of the Village Hidden in the Leaves?"

She snorted and chuffed. Couldn't really answer that.

"Where are you taking them?"

She tossed her head in the direction Dobutsu had directed her, muzzle lifted high, pricking her ears and pointing them forwards for emphasis.

"You are returning them to Konoha?"

She dipped her head in the affirmative.

"Why they injured and unconscious?"

They could not possibly be so ignorant as to be unable to read the signs- evidently, the friends had been in a fight. They were doing this on purpose. Was it to see if she was pretending to be unable to speak, to see if she would slip up? She couldn't imagine why, nor why else they would be doing this. Perhaps stalling to see if the friends would wake up?

She huffed and eyed them warily, but lowered herself on bent forepaws, wings down and to the sides in an inviting gesture. Best to just let them see the situation for themselves.

The friend-friends stared blankly at her for a long moment before the leader made a series of gestures. Two friend-friends stepped forward cautiously while the others remained where they were, though each casually palmed the hilts of their swords.

Asuga didn't bother huffing at them for the display, merely looking dully at the approaching two as they reached her and carefully hopped onto her back. Twin pulses of chakra lit up in her senses. Medics, then. Like Fukuro. She couldn't resist the brush of relief at the recognition.

"Well?" the leader prompted.

"It's them," one confirmed. "Team Aki." Their chakra flickered worriedly as they quickly ran a glowing green palm over each of the friends. "All in critical condition. Third degree burns, shattered bones, a gut wound, fever, infection, signs of poisoning, first signs of sepsis. They need medical attention ASAP."

"And the others?"

"Non-lethal injuries. Look to be Uzumaki."

The leader nodded brusquely and turned back to Asuga. "Teams Tomin and Iko will escort you to the village. Will you allow our medics to remain on your back to provide emergency treatment?"

She blinked slowly, rumbling a short purr and dipping her head, hoping he'd understand at least one of the gestures. Thankfully, he nodded back.

"Taicho," one of the medics called, "The, err, tiger, is hurt too." She felt them peel away several strips of the makeshift bandages, now soaked through with blood and sweat and pus, tensing at the sight of her wounds beneath.

The leader's chakra signature sharpened once more to focused attention, though there was no sign of negative intent in it. "Severity?"

"Just as bad as Team Aki, most likely the same cause. Third degrees covering maybe seventy percent of its back, severe infection. Looks like sepsis is ready to set in. Some deep cuts to the muscle tissue, broken skin along the spine, damage to the tendons connecting to the wings. Bone is exposed in some places." The warm-cool painful-soothing touch of a glow technique washed over a small section of her back, and she purred in pleasant surprise at the sensation, craning her neck around to try and get a look at what they were doing. She hadn't realized how much her injuries had deteriorated. "We didn't notice sooner because she's carrying the others on top of her injuries."

The leader's tone remained toneless and calm, though a note of something grim had crept into it. "Are you a summons?"

She tilted her head at them in confusion and blinked. They took that as a no.

"A ninken?"

Head still canted, she merely blinked again. Another no.

Out of options, then. "At the pace you were moving earlier, our village would be a day and a half's travel from here. Can you make it?"

Asuga blinked as if nonplussed, and straightened up slightly, head un-tilting itself. She blinked again and made that strange rumbling purr.

They nodded decisively. "We will escort you. The medics will see to both Team Aki and you as we move. If necessary, we can take your other passengers, but our speed will decrease in that case, so please bear with them as long as you can." Asuga rumbled acknowledgement and followed as they turned sharply on their heel and leapt forward into a sprint down the road.

The extra two passengers weren't too much of a strain in terms of weight, but with eleven people on her back it was starting to get a little crowded. She had to shuffle her wings almost constantly to adjust unconscious bodies from shifting a wrong direction and falling off. The medics quickly noticed, though, and started doing something that made them all stick to her back. When she realized what was going on, she flicked her ears back at them and rumbled a purr of gratitude to them, finally able to relax the damaged, twitching muscles in her wings. A fluttering feeling on one of her remaining patches of fur indicated a responding pat from one of the medics. Asuga decided she liked them.

As it turned out, following the road was much less taxing than leaping between branches and dodging through trunks. The road twisted and curved, increasing total traveled distance, but they made up for it with better speed. Having actual guides was very useful- they kept to the road for the most part, but cut across slopes and ravines when it was more efficient. She could understand now why the estimated time frame for her travel through this part of the journey was so ranged. They'd had an initially lower estimate of her speed, yes, but trying to cut a straight path through the Land of Fire's forests was taxing in its own way.

Night fell, and she was glad to push on when the friend-friends showed no signs of flagging, though they did ask her if she needed to rest. They raised no disagreements when she turned the offer down in favor of continuing through the night. In fact, their chakra signatures tinged with something warm and approving, and lost a bit of the standoffish caution.

They did not stop, but they did slow enough to feed and hydrate themselves as they ran. One friend-friend went around to each of the others, gathering spare tasteless sticks, and boldly came right up next to her shoulder to offer them to her, mask skewed to the side as they gnawed on one of their own. She accepted graciously, snapping them out of the air as they unwrapped each stick and tossed it in front of her muzzle, though only ate five before refusing any more. In her current state, such tiny things didn't do very much for her. It would not do to waste food.

When the bold friend-friend tried to figure out how to offer her water from their canteen, she couldn't help her amusement as they matched her stride for stride, pouring out the contents into her mouth and embarrassedly realizing that it had barely served to wet her tongue. Deciding to put them out of their misery, she made sure to notify the others before stirring her chakra. Reaching into the air with a deft pull, she tugged the moisture out of the air, compressing it to condensate into a swirling stream around her. She opened her mouth and manipulated the water in until she'd had her fill, then met the bold friend-friend's nonplussed stare. Directing the tip of the tendril to the mouth of their canteen, she refilled it to the top before splitting the stream up six ways and sending them to the other friend-friends. Professionals as they were, none outright laughed, though she could feel amusement from all of them layered over emotions of slight surprise at her level of control despite her condition. They accepted her offers of refills just as graciously as she'd accepted their food, paranoia mostly pacified with having seen her drink from the water herself.

They picked up the pace again after that, all eager to make better time. The tension in the air between them had dropped significantly, though remained in buzzing undertones in their shared urgency to get the friends to help.

The night passed. Dawn broke on a clear day and a silver, meandering river. They followed it for a stretch, taking one of those off-road shortcuts, and one of the medic friend-friends on her back called forward and told her that the river had a name, and that its name was Naka. Asuga looked at the river, and looked at the sun as it stained it in not-blood red and just-warm fire, and wondered if the older creatures in the facility had had names before they'd become creatures, names unknown because they'd never been shared. She'd never asked, and so would never know.

They left the Naka when it crossed with the road again, though the medic friend-friend told her they would see it again because it cut through Konoha, the village, the place they were returning/coming to.

The sun rode higher in the sky. Asuga lifted her wings so that they cast shadows onto her back, though didn't close them over it so as to not make it unbearably hot. There were two fluttering pats this time, and she purred back reponse. The running friend-friends were directed to take to the shadows by the forest fringes, though the leader steadfastly remained at point, exposed under the beating sun with Asuga, the first line of defense between her and their friends and any who might oppose them. Another friend-friend, the one who had dropped back to take the rear guard from the beginning, also held their position, the one entrusted with the backs of every other one of them. Asuga remembered the leader had spoke of a Team Tomin and a Team Iko. They must have been the leaders of the two teams, like Zouge was leader of his. She found it easy to respect them.

The sun rose and crested and peaked and began its long journey back down. The friend-friends cycled through positions, switching out with the leaders so that they could recover from the harsh Hi no Kuni sun, though they always returned, and always took the longest turns at point and rear guard.

Occasionally, they would come across a caravan or lone traveller, and they would slip just into the forest fringes to pass them by. Other times, it would be other traveling shinobi, these all dressed in blues and blacks and forest green flak. The shinobi would always be oncoming; their group was moving too fast to be caught up by anyone coming up behind them unless in assault. No matter who they came across, though, they always took the unseen path, which usually meant brief detours into the trees. Asuga remembered what her Master had said about being one of the elites, and supposed the discretion probably had to do with it.

The sun set. Night fell. More tasteless sticks were passed around. The bold friend-friend managed to trick her into eating six by tossing her two at a time before she realized what they were doing. She drank condensated water and distributed the remnants, which were accepted without hesitation this time.

"Almost there," the leader-that-spoke, the speaking-leader, announced, monotone voice somehow so very relieved. "ETA of two hours." The medics had managed to keep the friends alive, but they were not stable and the medics had long since run out of chakra. Each body was a blistering weight on Asuga's back, burning with fever and sickness and reeking of encroaching death. None had woken since Dobutsu at the border.

She urged them forward.

They picked up the pace a little more.

Half an hour out from their destination, they began to drop their pace. A whole network of chakra signatures swirled through the area, orbiting and counter-orbiting some distant, unseen center. The friend-friends had drawn in their formation so that it no longer took up the full width of the road, and the speaking-leader and the silent-leader had taken up their point and rear guard positions once more. Rapid signs and gestures flashed across their hands towards the trees, and the group approached unimpeded.

Ten minutes out from the village, they came to a stop in the middle of the road.

It was close to a full moon, likely just a day or two away, and the sky was clear. It was easy to make out the welcoming committee laid out for them.

If there was one thing to be grateful for, she supposed it might have been for the fact that all the shinobi present wore the bone-masks and black and white-grey of her Master's friend-friends. At the same time, they were supposed to be the elites, so if all twenty of the ones spread out in the direct vicinity decided to attack, she would be in deep trouble. Then again, they'd proven themselves decently intelligent so far. Hopefully that was a requirement for their rank.

In the middle of the road, three people stood waiting for them. The one on her left was equipped in the same type of mask and gear as the other elites, a thick mane of ear-length navy hair ruffling in a light breeze. The one on her right was a middle-aged man with long, wild, violet-stained locks that must have burned a scarlet fire under daylight, and an expression that was somehow both concerned and grim. The man in the middle was garbed in a strange combination of a formal white robe over lightweight armor, and while all three held themselves with the air of those who gave orders and expected them to be obeyed, something in the very presence he had seemed to bolster those elites in his presence with an invisible strength. There was no doubt he was the one in charge here.

In a single motion, the seven friend-friends that had escorted Asuga knelt in obeisance, uttering a respectful call of acknowledgement in one voice.

"Hokage-sama."

The man in the middle nodded and stepped forward a pace. "Team Tomin, Team Iko." Dark-colored eyes swept the group and _saw_. "Report, Meiro."

She realized then that the messenger that had been sent had left just before the pseudo-conversation. That meant that she was still more of an unknown to them than not, a possible threat, and that they were not yet fully aware of the state the friends were in.

She resisted the urge to fidget.

If these friend-friends obeyed this man, then her Master likely did too. Dealing with him would probably be the best way to help her Master. She must have patience.

"With all due respect, sir, if I could request medical attention for our comrades first? It's Team Aki, plus a few."

"Granted," the 'Hokage' instantly agreed, waving his hand. Immediately, several of the elites stepped forward from the encirclement and approached at speed. Asuga gripped the urge to jump back and add space between herself and others in a stranglehold and held her ground as they darted in close. One of the medics on her back patted her reassuringly and murmured something about it being okay. She appreciated the sentiment.

A total of five elites had stepped forward. Counting those already on her back, sixteen was not a reasonable number to attempt to cram on top of her. Instead, Asuga helped to carefully maneuver the friends and her Master down to lay on the ground. The two medics she'd been carrying began briefing the new arrivals as they split up to tend to the friends, one or two to each, depending on severity.

A massive knot of tension loosened in her chest. She hadn't even realized it was there until that moment. It felt like all the kinds of warm feelings her Master and his friends and his friend-friends had introduced to her so far. She hadn't realized there had been so many.

Asuga shook her head restlessly when they tried to see to her as well, lifting her wings to cover her back again to obstruct their view, and chuffed lightly at them. She would be fine until the others had been dealt with. The two she'd carried hovered and emitted particularly disapproving feelings, but eventually relented simply because it would be a waste of time to argue. They did, however, brief the others on her condition as well. Soon, there was an entire bubble of disapprovement swirling around her. She ignored it and merely watched intently as they worked, ears pricked to listen to the speaking-leader.

"Approximately twenty-seven hours ago, a powerful non-allied chakra signature was noted to have crossed our borders with the Land of Iron at high speeds. As the outermost border patrols were unable to catch up to challenge the intruder, the reserve squads were notified. Team Tomin and Team Iko moved up to intercept as the closest in proximity. We engaged with the intruder, a large non-human combatant class, but broke off when we noticed that it appeared to be carrying Konoha shinobi- specifically, Team Aki. A messenger was dispatched to notify you, as per your previous orders regarding any information on their status. When we approached a second time, it appeared content to ignore us without retaliation so long as we did not impede it. We intercepted again to question it, but as far as we can tell it cannot speak, though it can clearly understand human speech. It responded to several of our questions, confirming that it was bringing Team Aki back to Konoha and denying status as a hostile, summons, or ninken. It allowed us to approach and examine its passengers, which additionally appeared to include five Uzumaki. They are currently still secured on its back, bound by ANBU standards, presumably Team Aki's work. All members of Team Aki were determined to be in critical condition. On closer inspection, the trespasser was deemed to be in a similarly dire condition. We are entirely unaware as to how it is still conscious.

"We informed it we would escort it here, and it acquiesced to carrying our two medics as we traveled so that it and Team Aki could receive emergency treatment. There were no further incidents. It has displayed high stamina and pain tolerance, and exhibited behavior that was amicable and accommodating and points towards high levels of intelligence, as well as a vested concern in Team Aki's well-being, though not as much the Uzumaki's. We recommend it also receive immediate emergency medical treatment."

Asuga held in the snort at the unsubtle hint.

"Communication troubles, eh?" The Hokage rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps I have a solution for that."

Lifting his hands, he bit a finger to draw blood, wove them through a chain of the strange-signs, and crouched to slap the palm to the dirt road. A flare of dense chakra, a burst of chakra smoke, and then there was another man standing beside the first three. But no- it wasn't a man, but a monkey. A monkey in clothes.

A monkey that took one look at her, raised an eyebrow, opened its mouth, and _spoke_.

"Well, well. What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Hiruzen?"

"Not me," the Hokage responded, unruffled. "Team Aki."

"Ah." The monkey scratched a cheek. "So what's that gotta do with this child here?"

"I'll explain in detail later, but, child?"

The monkey grunted and gestured at various parts of her body. "Yeah, a little'un. A girl. She might be half-starved and species-confused, but it you look closely at the proportions of her head and paws you'll see they're a bit big for the rest of her body."

Asuga blinked.

"Hey girlie, can you understand us? How you feeling? Where you from? Where're your parents?" The monkey was talking to her now. Perhaps he'd be able to understand her? She'd never come across another not-human that could clearly communicate before. The other creatures were hardly in any state of mind to try, and normal animals were a bit on the dumb side for higher-level conversations.

Couldn't hurt to try.

That said- how _did_ one speak without human words?

She chuffed, trying to convey her dilemma. The monkey furrowed his brow and squinted at her.

"No one ever taught you how to speak?"

She blinked and bobbed her head the human way.

"Okay, stop right there. You're sending both animal and human signals, and they mean different things. Hell, every _species_ interprets a gesture differently. I'm not all that familiar with tigers, or whatever bird you seem to be sprouting feathers for, so I can't really help you there, but there's a sort of universal tongue that summons and ninken use to communicate. It mostly relies on deliberate fluctuations and manipulations of chakra signatures, since that can't be as easily confused across species cultures, though there are a few universal gestures too, like nodding and shaking your head no. I'm gonna switch to that now and we can do a quick crash course on it, okay?" She blinked at the onslaught of information and managed to remember to nod in confirmation.

[Alright, so here's the deal,] the monkey started. She immediately straightened up and stared at him, thrown by how easily and naturally she could understand him. [Oh, you're quick to catch on, aren'tcha? Great, makes this easier. So. I'm Monkey King Enma, current acting head of the Monkey Summons. Just call me Enma-sama for convenience's sake. And you are?]

She tilted her head and tried to mimic what Enma-sama was doing.

[Eh… say again?] The monkey looked terribly amused.

In the end, it ended up coming out somewhat similarly to how she spoke in human tongue. [Master gave name to me. 'Bird can- bird that flies.' Asu- ka- ta-] She furrowed her brows and tried again. [Asuga.]

"Asuga, eh?" He eyed her form. "Not the first thing that came to my mind, but I suppose it could be the second." The three men and the elites were all watching the exchange with a well-hidden fascination. [You said your Master gave you that name?] He shifted abruptly back to the other language. [Who is your Master?]

[Z-Saku-ou-mo-ge,] she stuttered through, surprised by how easy it was to trip up when thinking two different answers. [Zouge,] she declared again without hesitation, unable to help but dart a worried gaze in his direction, and then one towards Enma-sama for the slip-up.

The monkey snorted. [Relax, kid, I know Zouge's real name. Talented kid.]

"Enma?" the Hokage prodded.

"Says Zouge's her Master. Apparently he was the one who gave her that name, too."

[How'd you meet him? Why'd you help?]

She told him.

Enma hummed, tapping a finger on the elbow of his crossed arms. "From what she's saying, it sounds like whatever mission you sent Zouge's team on went to utter hell. She met him when he got tossed into her cage because it had the strongest containment measures. A bunch of time passed, the usual torture and interrogation, Zouge's team broke in and killed a bunch of things, and then the whole place blew up and collapsed on them all. She managed to drag them out, kill a bunch more things, found the Uzumaki, and then hauled ass back here because everyone was in fucking shitty condition.

"As for that thing about her being in a cage…" he hesitated, darted a sharp gaze over her form again. "If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say she was an experiment of some kind." He raised a questioning brow at the Hokage.

"That sounds to be the most likely scenario, yes," the man agreed mildly.

Rolling his eyes, the monkey sighed loudly and unrepentantly.

"In that case, it seems Uzu has quite a bit to thank her for," the scarlet-haired leader spoke up for the first time. "After all these years, we had long since resigned ourselves to finding remains at best."

"Yeah, well, thank her later," Enma grumbled. He jabbed a finger at Asuga. "Don't think I can't smell that nasty mess on your back. You've got sepsis. Hurry up and let the medics fix you."

Huffing, Asuga relented under the sudden weight of the level gazes of all seven medics present, moving to unfold her wings-

"_Seal_!"

-_a burst of blindingly bright white light_-

Asuga _howled_.

Instantly, every hand had a weapon at the ready and pointed at-

"Hold!" the Hokage and Enma shouted in tandem, each throwing an arm out to make the corresponding sign.

Everyone froze.

Almost everyone.

Five figures leapt away from where Asuga stood, a slightly lopsided web of glowing white characters sprawled across her temporarily immobilized form. They landed in a five-point formation around her and slapped their hands to the earth before anyone could grasp enough of the situation to do anything.

"Sealing: Five Bladed Chains Seal!"

Five circles of bright light erupted around their feet, illuminating the haggard and disheveled appearances of the five red-ones, a myriad of panic, desperation, and grim determination in their expressions. Glowing grey chains exploded from their seals, shooting straight for Asuga. Some whipped around limbs or the width of her body, latching on firmly with the wicked hooks each chain was tipped with. Others simply plunged straight into her flesh, sinking deep into her flanks with solid _thwaks_ punctuated by arcs of pseudo blood spray. At the impact of the puncturing chains, the immobilization seal promptly shattered under the strain of her contracting muscles. But it was too late- the chains jerked taut, pulling her limbs outwards from under her and cinching tight, choking coils around her neck. She heaved against the chains in resistance, managing to keep her hind legs upright, splayed in an outward brace against the ground, though lost her purchase in her forelegs. She shrieked indignation as she was dragged forward, face ground into the dirt as she was pulled to the earth jaw-first, arms pinned between her chest and the ground beneath her.

She'd forgotten the first thing to know about the red-ones- never assume. They stuck together, and acted in the best interest of the whole. Sometimes that meant sticking up for each other, sometimes that meant bargaining one of their own against another of theirs. There was no single line of logic that governed their actions. Simply because they had arrived at the village, a place they, too, had been seeking to reach, did not mean that they could be relied on to no longer behave antagonistically towards herself. Nothing had changed between them, only between each of them and the friends and friend-friends and the village people. She should not have let them return to consciousness on their own terms, even bound as they had been. If she squinted, she could even see the remnants of small red symbols drawn in blood on the scraps of rope bindings the red-ones had scattered when initially putting distance between themselves and her.

"Sandaza! Morifu! Hurode! Kabeko! Hekimaru! What is the meaning of this?!" the scarlet-haired leader shouted, addressing the red-ones.

"Uzukage-sama!" the oldest red-one shouted back, "Hurry! While it's immobilized- kill it!"

'Uzukage-sama' scowled in consternation. "Why would you want to kill her? Has she not brought you to Konohagakure safely?"

"That is of no consequence!" The oldest red-one yanked on his chains. The others followed his lead and did the same with theirs. Asuga roared, doing her best to keep the muscles in her neck taut and her airways open against the bladed chains. All over her body, lines of weeping red had opened beneath the slicing chains as they bit deeper into her flesh with every inch they were shortened. "That _thing_ is an abomination. It must be destroyed!"

She snarled at the red-ones, claws itching to curl around their disgusting, snivelling throats and pull out the length of their esophaguses from their places in their stringy necks- but the friends had wanted to bring them back with them- the red-ones had _attacked_ the friends over her- her Master had never said anything either for or against them-

She snarled at the red ones, but held still, eyes darting between the others present. One of the three evident leaders had called each red-one by name. She could not hastily raise hostile intent towards any of them. Her Master and the friends were all out. The friend-friends had only interacted minimally with her. Out of all of them, her Master was the only one she could truly rely on, anyways. No, she could do nothing but accept whatever these people dealt her and hope that her Master would not suffer blame over her.

"Obviously, she's not exactly normal, but that's hardly anything special by shinobi standards. On what do you base these claims of yours?" Enma questioned, slightly aggressive in his tone, giving her a burning look before looking back towards the red-ones.

The oldest red-one snorted. Enma narrowed his eyes at the disrespect but said nothing. "The physical distortion is merely a side effect. That thing was made to kill and destroy. It is capable of nothing else, be it in thought or action. Furthermore, while it's not self-aware, it's still very clever. When it gets whatever it is that it thinks it wants from you, it will turn on you."

This time it was Enma's turn to scoff. Apparently he had appointed himself the role of primary defense on her behalf. She wasn't complaining. "Team Tomin and Team Iko have vouched that she has only behaved amenably. And in case you hadn't noticed, we just had a conversation. She is very much self-aware."

"I don't know who you are, respectable Summons-san," the oldest red-one bristled, "But you have not seen what we have. They called this thing the _divine beast_ for a reason, and not because it helped crops grow. Over a period of four years, it's killed over _seven thousand_ people."

The air in the surroundings seemed to drop a dozen degrees or so. While the friend-friends glanced amongst themselves uncertainly, the ones who had been waiting with the three leaders tightened their grips on their weapons just that much more. Their signatures were not hostile, but Asuga knew that they would not stay their blades if their Hokage-sama gave the command to end her.

Enma was speaking again, but she was no longer listening.

She did not know what it meant to delude herself. It simply was not something that could have remained unweeded from her.

It was almost guaranteed that she would die here today.

She'd never before truly feared death. She was far too familiar with it to be. But now, staring it in the face, having just met and chosen her true Master such a short time before-

She did not fear death, but she did not want to go.

She did not want to leave her Master, her Master who she had still yet to ensure would be okay, her Master who had still not woken up, her Master who had still not showed her the world he lived in like he'd promised he would.

There was nothing she could do.

Drawing a deep breath, she accepted this fact of the world. It was the way of things. She acknowledged it, and turned inwards, searching, reaching-

The bond she'd forged with her Master was a powerful one, one that even shared the echoes of their thoughts and emotions between them. She didn't know what such a powerful tie would do upon her death. Before she died, she had to break it.

It took a bit of fumbling, but, finding it, she managed to clasp it with her- _something_. She didn't know what. It didn't matter. Cradling the warm thing gently, she held it close and basked in it. It was so warm, so calming and reassuring, so strong and yet kind, unyielding and yet welcoming and generous. It was all the things that was her Master. No, she did not fear death, but she would miss her Master very much.

The bond pulsed lightly in recognition, much weaker than the first time she'd felt it, and with an additional quality of fragility, probably due to her Master's sickness.

Breaking meant damage. She didn't want to hurt her Master, especially when considering his state.

No, she would not break the bond- she would let go of it.

She would give it up.

Stepping back from the warmth, she released it and followed it deep down within herself, seeking the place of origin, feeding the length outwards, pushing it towards her Master. The bond pulsed again, stronger, more aware of itself. Her Master felt what she was doing.

He felt it and Did Not Approve.

The sensation of curiosity and concern and disappointment and slight anxiety washed over her through fading warmth. She felt the insistent tug of his focus, the demand for her response, and gave it, could not refuse him this one last thing.

He latched on tight and refused to let go.

"_What the hell do you think you're doing?_"

The words were directed towards her, but the vicious snarl was aimed at something- some_one_ else. Startled, she rose back to awareness in her body, glazed starburst purple and gold homing straight in on silver-grey, bright despite the bloodshot sclera and slightly drooping lids and absolutely _blazing_.

Her Master was awake.

_Her Master was awake_.

And he was _utterly furious_.

Everyone in the vicinity had startled at the sudden snarl. All attention was on her Master now as he struggled up into a sitting position, brushing off the agitated medics' attempts to keep him down. It must have been agony on his abdomen. He wasn't paying his own condition any mind, though, focused solely on Asuga's.

"Release her," he snarled, quiet, weakened, predatory. "_Now_."

"Zouge," the Hokage interjected carefully, "While these measures are certainly overkill, perhaps it would be best to-"

"She wouldn't have harmed any of ours," he ground out, panting. The medics had given up trying to get him to lay back down again out of fear his resistance might open the ghastly wound in his gut. Instead, one of the other elites had come to kneel next to her Master, urging him to lean on them in support while the medics re-busied themselves with their healing. "I know she wouldn't have. Restraints of any kind are unnecessary. Not to mention most of them won't work anyways. Let her go. I take full responsibility for her and her actions."

The oldest red-one merely looked at her Master coldly, remnants of affronted disdain from the previous conversation lining his expression. "This man is seriously injured and clearly has his judgement impaired. Regardless of its intentions, this thing is too dangerous to simply be let to run freely. We must take advantage of its weakness now, when it can't resist-"

"Is that what you think?" Her Master scoffed, disdainful in his fury. "You're deluding yourselves if you think you've got her _subdued_."

"As I said," the oldest red-one continued, aloof and composed in the belief of his own rightness, "this man clearly has his judgement impaired. Granted, in normal conditions the beast would likely be able to break this sealing technique, but it has been weakened by combat, travel, and injury. As of this moment, it is helpless. Releasing it would be the highest degree of foolishness."

"Is that so?" her Master drawled the question, obviously not seeking an actual response. "In that case…" Turning his head in clear dismissal, he found the gaze of the Hokage and held it levelly through the slits in his mask.

The man looked at him for a long moment with a piercing gaze. He nodded slowly, exhaling a deep breath.

Her Master bowed his head in thanks even as the oldest red-one bristled and opened his mouth again. "Hokage-dono, you can't seriously be considering-"

"That is enough, Sandaza!" the Uzukage interrupted angrily. "How dare you behave so disrespectfully to the leader of Uzushio's greatest friends? It seems you have forgotten what basic gratitude is in your time away!"

"But that _thing_-!"

"While I really appreciate you doing your very best to play nice and not kill those five," her Master called in a clearly audible, rasping voice, eyes once more only for her, steamrolling right over the spluttering red-one, "and I would really appreciate you continuing to not do so, so as not to cause an international incident, you don't have to just stand there. Don't you remember what I told you? I meant what I said. You're not a piece of property."

Everyone was listening in rapt attention. Even the oldest red-one had fallen into silent trepidation.

"_You don't have to take anything lying down_."

The words fell sharp and heavy in the silence. Nobody moved. Nobody _breathed_.

Brilliant, brilliant silver bored into her, and Asuga found herself blinking, once, twice-

She peeled her lips back, holding his gaze, and gritted her teeth, tentatively bared and glinting white in the moonlight. Questioning.

He _grinned_ back, teeth bared in a matching display. "You don't have to worry about causing trouble for me."

Startled, she blinked at him. The bond- her thoughts must have been transmitted through the bond earlier.

"If anyone tries to pick on you, just beat them the hell up. I'll take care of the complicated stuff." His grin was slightly wan and completely unwavering.

Never breaking his gaze, Asuge reached back within herself, though not for the bond. She was tired- despite her great stamina, it was an indisputable fact that she'd held this form and run and fought for three days straight. But this- this she could do. This time, she found that tightly compressed knot that she held curled up within herself, the one she usually hid away to at least partially stem the tide of mindless terror that would otherwise constantly flow in her wake. He returned her gaze unflinchingly, still smiling, ever faithful in her.

She touched the knot of unadulterated violent aggression, and let it unravel.

A tsunami- it rushed out of her, swamping the night, sweeping in a vortex of perfectly tangible intangibility, the manifestation of anguish, of slaughter, of misfortune and misery, of the most grotesque monsters of the deepest black. It was blood, it was hunger, it was lives flashing before one's eyes.

This was her truth. She would not hide it- could not, really, because it was her nature. She had been raised into it- it was a part of her. It was all she had ever known.

So instead, she let it all out.

It settled on their shoulders, made itself at home in the chinks of their armor, and they beheld the horror that was the divine beast's killing intent.

It itself was quiet in its violence, not muted but someway withheld, and all the more terrifying in its restraint, its precise control, its pinpoint focus. At the same time, an illusion of a great rush of noise accompanied it as all the blood in each person's body pounded through their veins and filled their ears with the palpitations of their hearts.

It could be forgiven that every person present, with the exception of her Master, shuddered violently under the smothering pressure, including those unconscious. Instinctively, a few gripped their weapons tighter, hefting them as if poised to strike-

"Stand down," her Master uttered. None dared contradict him this time, reaction times shot to hell. The red-ones gripped their chains tighter, nervously pumping in more reinforcing chakra. They had made their stance. Now they had to prove it.

Allowing her jaw to fall open, Asuga began releasing a rumbling, slow-building growl as she shifted beneath the biting chains, rousing her chakra and drawing in natural energy. It slipped between her faltering, grasping reach, elusive- but there. She snatched at it, and held on. She widened the stance of her hind legs, tensing, then sharply snapped all the muscles in her body taut as she forcibly pulled her bound forelegs underneath her once more. Paws flexing, she unsheathed thick, wickedly curved claws and dug them into the hard-packed dirt, puncturing the surface and gripping it with a force that sent fissures running out from the breaks. All across her body, bright lines of electric blues and purples sparked to life and raced the outlines of her form, tracing grime-darkened stripes. The growl built and built and built, and as it reached a crescendo she flexed the whole of her body in an abrupt full-body jerk against the chains and let out an earth-shaking roar-

-and completely _shattered_ the chains.

Broken links of chakra scattered in a shower of glowing grey bits and flaring streams of chakra and red, red spray.

Somewhere off to the side, she registered a soft curse of something like recognition from the Monkey King.

Asuga lashed her wings outwards and threw her head to the side, shaking off the remnants of the stubbornly clinging bladed links accompanied by a pulse of raw energy.

The red-ones were thrown back by the rebound. Among them, only the oldest red-one managed to remain standing. He cursed something unintelligible as he dug in his heels, clasping his hands together and shouting something else equally so as he threw his hands apart in a slicing gesture and launched a large wind blade in her direction.

She was heavily injured, even more so now from the chains, but her reaction time would have been just enough to step out of the way.

It would not, however, have been enough to grab her master and the friends and the medics behind her, too.

The decision to stand her ground didn't even require conscious thought.

As with all fuuton techniques, the blade was fast, leaving her no time to counter with a jutsu large enough to match it without a chance to build up momentum. Wheeling around, she lowered the thick dome of her skull and threw her battered and torn wings up, topsides bared, letting the wind blade impact, feeling it bite deep through muscle into bone. She hadn't needed to catch the full length of it- the missed ends gouged deeply into the earth on either sides of the tips of her wings, far short of those behind her.

Not allowing pause for the oldest red-one to come out of his surprise, she lunged forwards, snarl on her lips, jaw dropped and teeth bared. Eyes widening almost comically, he scrambled backwards in panicked automatic reaction, tripping over himself and falling on his rump, trying futilely to put distance between them even as he attempted to bring his hands up for another jutsu too late.

Slamming a forepaw to the ground mere inches from his leg, Asuga dove for him, maw open, muzzle curled in a vicious snarl, teeth gleaming.

Instinct seized his limbs, mouth parting in terror-

-_loosed a howl of resentment_-

-_screamed_-

Trembling, the oldest stared up into her narrowed gaze with wide, wide eyes, sclera fully surrounding pinprick-shrunken pupils, expression frozen into what could only be called panicked stoic terror. Halted just outside of his reach, eyes leveled narrowly on his shuddering form, she flared her nostrils in irritation as she caught the sour, reeking scent produced by the loss of motor functions in his fright.

Suddenly, with a muted flash, a circular formation of glowing black lines unfurled underneath where the oldest red-one was collapsed. He only managed a jolt of surprise in his shell-shocked state before the lines of black ink had scrawled themselves up his limbs and over the rest of him, settling after a moment and locking. As soon as she had recognized the style, Asuga had tensed, eyes shooting to the side to identify the perpetrator.

"That will be enough from you, Sandaza." The Uzukage stepped forward, one hand raised in a half-sign. "Regardless of your reservations and motivations, we will be discussing your _behavior_ later." He turned away from the oldest red-one to face her then.

Dropping his hand, he leaned forward in a simple bow. She blinked at him, half-lidded and unimpressed, eyes still narrowed suspiciously. "On behalf of my people and myself, you have my most sincere apologies, Asuga. Without speaking of other matters, Sandaza's behavior towards you as his and his comrades' savior has been unacceptable, first and foremost. While it is presumptuous to ask after having stood by the side in the duration of his behavior, I hope you can forgive him their actions."

Asuga eyed the Uzukage. He was an older man, too, though didn't appear to be older than the oldest red-one. His voice was genuine, and his chakra calm.

She allowed another beat to pass before withdrawing from the oldest red-one's personal space and facing the Uzukage head-on, though not before snorting another gust of hot, threatening breath into the oldest red-one's face, ruffling his sweat-soaked scarlet mop. It seemed he'd finally run out of things to say. She growled a moment, and manipulated her chakra the way Enma had shown her.

"She said, 'There is no question of forgiveness, only distrust.'" Enma shrugged. "Can't say she's wrong. Or that I blame her."

"Nor can I," the Uzukage agreed, "Though I still thank you for not holding it against him as a grudge."

Huffing a tired breath through her nose, Asuga gave a bare flick of her ear in acknowledgement as she turned away from the posturing and the formal-speak and back to what was actually important. She padded quietly to her Master, none daring now to hamper her way. Caution colored their signatures, but also recognition of what her Master had wanted to show them. She'd carried the friends and the red-ones here on her own volition. If she'd wanted to kill any of them, she would have done so long ago- _could_ have done so long ago. She was not here looking for a fight.

Silver-bright and warmth welcomed her. Her Master smiled.

Another new warmth, hot and bright and giddy, flowed into her through the bond, whispering something that took her a moment to identify and another to reconcile against the previous image of gleefully triumphant masters from the facility.

_Pride_. Her Master was proud of her.

Even with the ever-present tinge of regret and aching sadness in all his emotions towards her, it felt wondrous. She reveled in the feeling, practically preening under its touch.

Circling around her Master and the medics tending to him, she carefully lowered herself to lay in a half-circle beside him, just enough space between them to allow the medics room to work. Her Master reached out a hand and she stretched her head forward to lay it down beside him. He settled his palm against the dome of her skull, just above the line of newly wind-split skin.

"Now that we can all interact civilly with each other," her Master began half-sardonically, voice starting to falter, "perhaps we can get some medical attention for Asuga?"

She nuzzled the outstretched arm carefully. He was fading fast. Remaining conscious was taxing him heavily. He should not have been able to awake earlier. This was her fault. He needed to return to unconsciousness quickly, and stop moving around.

"Yes, yes," the Hokage agreed, "Though that goes just as much for yourself, Zouge. Rest. We will discuss your mission later. As for Asuga here, you have my word we will ensure she is treated fairly."

One of the medics lifted a glowing green palm to her Master's forehead at a glance from the Hokage. Her Master blinked blearily and managed a last half-slurred, "That is all I ask, Hokage-sama." Eyes drooping, he slumped into the hold of the elite supporting him and was lowered to lie flat again.

"Take him to the hospital's secure ward. He will be transferred to the ANBU barracks once cleared from immediate danger." The medics nodded in acquiescence as two other elites popped up with a stretcher and shifted her Master onto it carefully. Asuga shifted restlessly at the sight, ignoring the medics who had stepped up to examine herself and rising with them and moving to follow when they made to leave. The two elites carrying her Master paused and looked to their leader questioningly.

The man quirked a lip. "Set _all_ of them them up in one of the cross-service surgeries. There should be enough room for them both to be treated there. And send word to the Inuzuka clan head that we are in need of a veterinarian capable of exceeding discretion."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." The leader who had remained silent until this point, the one dressed in the same manner as her Master and the elites, waved a hand, and a pair of elites from among the surrounding groups nodded in acknowledgement and leapt away, presumably to deliver the messages.

Duties delegated, the Hokage turned back to the Uzukage as he spoke up. "It seems that I'll be extending my stay a bit longer after all. My apologies for imposing."

"Not at all," the Hokage responded with equal civility. "It is our pleasure to host you, though I do wish it were under more pleasant circumstances. I presume you're tired after a long day of politicking with our councils- shall we leave further discussions for the morning?"

"Ah, yes, much obliged. It does hardly seem like this matter will be resolved any time soon." The Uzukage allowed a slight grimace to pull at his mouth as the two leaders turned back towards the village proper, making polite small chat all the while. Monkey King Enma rolled his eyes, caught Asuga's gaze, and gave her a lopsided smile and wink before disappearing in a puff of chakra smoke.

The elite leader flashed their hands through an extremely rapid series of hand signs and gestures, apparently delegating roles. The elites acknowledged and scattered, some darting back in the direction of the village, some blending into the darker pieces of night under the cover of the forest. Teams Tomin and Iko formed up around Asuga and her Master and the friends once more as they too moved to make for the village, sharing nods with her and dropping over the group something that swirled and shifted around them like a cloak or cloud of chakra. She sniffed at it twice- benign enough in nature- and let it be.

A swift lope brought the group to the towering gates of Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves. As she passed between the massive twin doors and the tense lesser-shinobi and under the arching wooden posts, Asuga allowed her eyes to drift from her Master for just a moment. She lifted her head to watch the archway pass over them, gazed beyond them to the bright, full disc of white and silver light of night, and then dropped her gaze to fall on the slumbering village as it sprawled out before them, quiet but not quite fully silenced. The night was cool, but not cold. A gentle breeze brushed past.

She breathed-

-and stepped forward into the unknown.

* * *

Notes:

Asuga can't sense the chakra signatures of the village from outside because it would be utterly stupid to not shield something like that with a seal or something, right? Because military regimes would want to somehow prevent rival military regimes from getting accurate counts of their forces and individuals' strength levels, right? There must be a reason why Hidden Villages are called Hidden Villages, right? Right? Right!

Sandaza and the red-ones/Uzumaki are a bit of a contradictory point for me. On one hand, there's no way around making them the 'bad guys' in the situation. On the other, they are intelligent people that are trying their best to do their duties as shinobi- endure, survive, keep their comrades alive, sacrifice their personal beliefs in the name of their villages' needs if necessary. They need to be hateable, but also understandable, if only in that sort of disgusting-but-logical way. (Arghh, I feel like I'm doing a bad job with themmm.)


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note:

Wow, it's been over half a year since I posted the first chapter of TWHF. Time really flies- and I feel like I've kinda gotten nowhere with the story so far. Sadness. (I know where I'm going! I swear! I just- am very slow in getting there? Ahaha, ha…) You guys would not believe how slow things are progressing with the upcoming chapters...

On the other hand, TWHF just broke 1,500 views a few days ago! Yay! I'd intended to post the chapter that day in something like commemoration of the event, but, uh… *sweats nervously, darts glances sideways, giggles nervously*

That being said, I've noticed that there is a significant drop in the number of people that view Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, which I'm hypothesizing means that they clicked on TWHF, saw the dense mass of words, went nope, and checked back out. Upon self-reflecting and reviewing the first, like, two pages of it, I'm considering rewriting at least the beginning of it, which I do personally find rather clunky and awkward now. What say you, my beloved readers?

Side note to a certain reviewer named haise, yes, I shall be attempting to keep to my current rate of one chapter every 1-2 months, though at this point it seems likely it'll be leaning towards the latter end of the range, at least for now. (Also, thank you for you lovely review, these are the things that keep all us writers motivated through our writers' block! 3) For all you guest readers, which I am assuming you are as I am unable to PM you, please do make a FF account if you can, it's free and will allow me to respond to you directly and in a much more timely manner. ^-^ (I also do not intend to be making responses in AN's a regular thing unless it's answering questions everyone should get the answer to, as I am aware that extendedly lengthy AN's tend to simply be ignored in general.)

Additionally, it seems asking for reviews shall get me reviews, so I shall shamelessly do so from now on! Read, review, fave, and enjoy!

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Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death. (Actually not really this time, but eh. Semantics.)

* * *

Whatever the chakra cloud was doing, it seemed to be quite useful in concealment. Genjutsu, Asuga guessed. The Masters had not made use of it often in the manner that the friend-friends were, but it seemed close enough to what she did remember.

They kept to the streets, maintaining a brisk clip, avoiding touching any passerby as they allowed them to walk directly through their formation and asked her to do the same. She obliged, watching the passerby curiously- they didn't seem to have the slightest inkling of what they were walking right through. High up above, a smattering of shinobi roof-hopped for easier travel. Most likely they themselves weren't out of consideration for her bulk.

Coming to a large white building capped by a blue roof, they skirted around to the back and were ushered inside through a larger entrance by a small group of white-garbed people. 'Doctors,' the friend-friends called them. They eyed her warily and with a tinge of fear. She ignored them.

She laid down in the half of the empty room the doctors directed her to only after she watched them set her Master and the friends down and begin working on them. A group of doctors approached her then, cautiously shuffling around to her back after the friend-friends explained they would do what they could for her burns, infections, and lacerations while waiting for the 'veterinarian'. She permitted this, keeping one constant eye on the doctors around her Master and the other around herself. It would not do to be incapacitated again.

On that note, she had sustained her semi-awakened form for over three days now. The strain was starting to show. It took more and more effort to channel the natural chakra constantly pouring into her body back out. Her reaction time was steadily declining; her body thrummed with heat.

Eyeing the scurrying doctors, Asuga decided that the friend-friends would do for a preliminary defense. They'd taken up defensive positions in the shadows of the room, out of sight but still simple enough for her to detect.

She allowed her eyelids to droop lower until they were hooded, purple-gold starbursts half-hidden and slightly dilated. Sound and scent and sight and taste and touch shifted, muted slightly as if the world had been pushed away and held at a distance. Mental processing disconnected from awareness until all that she discerned was _threat_ or _notathreat_. The world went on, and she watched as her body shut down until all that remained were automatic functions and a constant periodic tail-twitch.

* * *

_-she asleep? _

_ No, heart rate- … -but- -mental activity- _

_ -can hear- … -see the way- … -tail- ... _

A needle, many needles, tiny, taped together, taped into the crook of her forepaw, too small to overcome her metabolism. Heads bowed together, three bobbing white-garbed forms, flicked glances, stacks of sheets of printed words and charts in hand. Another form, female, sharp-eyed, smelling of something canine.

_-condition- … -bad, infection's eaten deep- … -extraordinary rate of regeneration- _

_ -heavy scarring, yes, though mostly- -discoloration- _

_ -how long?- … -no signs- -sleep deprivation- _

An arrival of a new group of signatures, muted, strong, recently familiar. Bone-white masks, a gentle brush of fingers over ruff, a quiet murmur of thanks. An older face, creased in stress lines and laugh lines, gravelly voice, succinct responding reports.

_-fractures, we set the- … -not sure- … -rapid healing- _

_-likely no adverse- … -fully- _

_-posses an extensively developed- … -tenketsu are- … -likely- -absurdly large reserves- _

_-even for summons- … -not?- … -shouldn't- -possible anyways- … -bone age shows- _

_Exactly what- -she?- … -like nothing- -ever seen before- _

_Perhaps- -answers when- … -inform- -upon awakening- _

Another brush of fingers, murmur, a… friendly? comforting? reassuring? smile, the vanishing of signatures.

* * *

As the arguably least-injured of the friends, Fukuro was the first to stir to true wakefulness. Asuga followed her there.

"Fukuro," the Hokage greeted, striding into the room, Enma and the elite-leader at his shoulders. Doctors bowed, elites came to attention in the shadows. He waved them off. "It is good to see you up."

"Hokage-sama," Fukuro returned, craning her neck to see him from where she was laid flat. Her voice cracked and rasped from disuse, though still smooth with the cool calm characteristic of all the elites. She still wore her mask on one side of her head, only briefly removed during the initial diagnosis to check for injuries. A doctor held a cup up to her lips, and she nodded to him briefly in thanks.

"No need for formalities. We're a little past that stage at this point." The words were a strange mix of amused and rueful.

Fukuro made an aborted motion with her head that might have been a tilt if she'd been upright. "I almost don't want to know."

"Oh, you do, actually. Your captain got quite a kick out of it. But, stories for later. How do you feel?"

"Been better," she admitted without hesitation. "Been worse. Mostly just chakra exhaustion for me."

"Fair enough."

"Verbal report?"

"If you would."

"How long have I been out?"

"By your wounds, we approximate about three days of travel, plus another half a day in Konoha."

"Three…" Fukuro glanced in Asuga's direction when a gap opened between the milling doctors. She found clear starburst purple-gold. "How much have you heard already?"

"Bare bones. Enma played translator for a bit when you first arrived."

Fukuro blinked. "I see."

Asuga was interested to discover that she had been correct in her deductions. Her Master's team had initially been sent in search of the red-ones, who were apparently members of a prominent clan skilled in sealing techniques. Uzumaki, they were called. They were members of an ally of her Master's people, and so they'd aided in the search.

"We arrived in the mountainous region after five days of travel. Whoever named the region was very descriptive- giant skeletons everywhere. We identified a large stretch of land, approximately one hundred fifty by two hundred kilometers, that was heavily trapped and began to systematically search the area. I can include a more detailed account and mark out the designs and types in the written report later?" The Hokage nodded wordlessly, seemingly content to listen.

"On the fourth day after arrival, we came on the first of a more complicated trap that incorporated seals and triggered it with insufficient preparation. Zouge-taichou pulled us out of it, but got caught himself and disappeared. When we inspected the debris, we were only able to determine that a reverse-summoning had been incorporated. Due to mission parameters, distance of travel involved, and a possible addition of a time constraint and target alertness, we were unable to send word of this or wait for backup. We continued the mission with Dobutsu in command and the retrieval of our captain as an added objective.

"Over the course of the next forty-seven days, we cleared approximately twenty thousand of the thirty thousand square kilometers of the trapped area before coming upon the target site. There were none of the usual give-aways to its location, since it appeared to be fully self-contained and self-sufficient. Later, we even found large underground farms connected to the main facilities. Mushrooms, tubers, the like.

"Upon our arrival to the site, they appeared to be bringing in a group of captives to be used as experimental subjects. Two hundred, maybe more. We slipped in when the perimeter defensive seals were dropped to let them in. When they were raised again, we were able to get a better look at them and realised they were of Uzumaki make, and clearly high-level. We didn't bother trying to mess with them.

"A day of recon got us the main entrances to the underground. We spent another two scoping it out. There were a few structures built into the surrounding area, and some spaces that looked like they were dedicated to combat exercises, but the vast majority of the facility was underground. Five distinct branches, going down over two hundred feet in places- agriculture, barracks, captive containment blocks, laboratories, and some sort of bastardized training grounds.

"We located the Uzumaki, made contact, determined that they were being held against their will, confirmed the nature of the facility's operations, and obtained more detailed information on the guard shifts and security protocols. Based off of their information, we concluded that we would not be able to extract them without engaging in combat, and that the best course of action would be to incapacitate as many as possible initially to decrease the disparity in numbers. Our target was the lowest containment block, holding the most dangerous experiments. The safe room in that block housed the trigger to the facility's self-destruct seals. We were also informed that the captain was most likely being held in one of the lower levels in the containment blocks.

"We used another day to prepare. At sixteen hundred hours the fifth day on-site, we bypassed the external defensive measures and entered combat within the facility itself, and assassinated the three leaders of the project. High jounin, skilled. Minimal contact, bodies retrieved. We returned to the Uzumaki immediately, and went through with their extraction. It triggered the alarm and tracking seals placed on the Uzumaki since we used reverse-summoning seals of their design to transport them above ground. Our team made its way down to the last containment block."

Here Fukuro slowed down, carefully choosing her words as if to remind herself the order of events.

"The captain- no, the creatures- We met heavy resistance just before the entrance to the last block in the form of several dozen inhuman creatures. We'd run into similar creatures prior to that, but these- these were significantly stronger, as well as more savage in appearance, disposition, and behavior. Up until then, the creatures had been genin-level, a few chunin in strength, though not skill. These were approaching low jonin in brute strength. They were less intelligent, though, less patient. More beast than man. We cut through them to the cell block.

"There were more creatures there. Slightly more intelligent, could work as a group. We had dealt with most of them when there appeared to be infighting in the safe room. A group of shinobi and non-combatant personnel had taken refuge there. One of them released a seal on the wall that released the restraints on her- on Asuga, she'd been in an isolated cell. Another one released a seal that would kill her." Fukuro looked to Asuga again as if to check she was still there. "She was still inside a cell. The captain was with her.

"We opened the cell, and I went in to check on his condition while the others covered us. The one who tried to kill Asuga threw a kunai. At her. Poisoned, and tagged. The captain- the captain blocked it for her. Nasty blow to the back.

"Asuga, she- I'm not sure what she did. Some sort of blood contract. With the captain." Asuga merely blinked placidly back at the barrage of piercing attentions she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of. Fukuro rushed to add, "Nothing bad, I don't think. At least not for the captain. It looked-" She swallowed as her voice cracked again, a grim expression twisting the corners of her mouth downwards. "It looked like a contract of servitude- a, slave contract, if you would- with her as the slave."

The Hokage was frowning heavily. "And she was the one to initiate it?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama."

He frowned some more, silent in thought for a long minute. A glance to the Monkey King.

Enma pursed his lips and directed the next question to Asuga. "Why?"

Asuga blinked in the sudden shift in address, surprised. While it was not so surprising that her Master's people would, too, speak to her and not at her, Fukuro was awake and clearly easier to communicate with. Nevertheless, she gave him a reply with barely a missed beat.

"Because they would have died otherwise, and she didn't want them to die, she says," Enma relayed. "And because no one has willingly gotten hurt for her before, so that kind of person, shouldn't she- err, she should-" He squinted at her as if that would make her disjointed phrasing more coherent. "Uh, that is, how could she do any less in return?"

"She's a good kid, sir," Fukuro supplied, the barest tinge of anxiety in her calm tone. "She-"

"I gave my word to your captain that she would be treated fairly," the Hokage interjected, not unkindly, noting the use of 'kid' in her phrasing. "I intend to keep it, Fukuro. Continue with your report for now."

Fukuro nodded, not quite at ease, but continued her account. "The blood contract seemed to trigger the transformation into this form. Before, she was much smaller. And… human. Definitely human."

"Well that certainly explains some things," Enma grumbled.

The Hokage raised an eyebrow at both of them in turn but said nothing, though his chakra signature felt vaguely disturbed beneath its calm surface.

"The man that tried to kill Asuga before, he triggered another seal on the wall. The self-destruct, apparently." Fukuro's tone was ironic and entirely unamused. "Asuga managed to grab the four of us and shield us from the worst of the blasts. The whole place came down on us, knocked us out for a moment. It was at this point we sustained the worst of our injuries, and lost combat functionality. When we came to, we were in a little gap between the rocks with Asuga holding up the earth around us. She dragged us up through two hundred feet of dirt and debris to the surface." She paused and confided nervously, "Speaking of which, none of the creatures use hand seals." _And can still perform jutsu_ went unspoken.

Alarm flooded the room, muted though it was. Asuga was confused, but remembered the strange hand signs not-creatures made and filed it away as another way-of-things.

Fukuro continued. "She engaged in combat with a group of hostiles upon reaching the surface, and dispatched them quickly. The external defenses were still functioning, and the patrols that had been out were returning. She extracted us a distance from the facility and returned to deal with pursuers. Given the length of time she was gone, and the sounds and chakra patterns we could sense, I think it's more likely that she _dealt_ with them, rather than merely misdirected them. There should have been over a hundred hostiles.

"At twenty hundred hours, she returned. She'd found the Uzumaki- chased them back to us actually. I don't think she likes them very much. They argued against her then, too, but the captain had told us to trust her. The Uzumaki attempted to catch us unawares as we prepared to leave, but failed. We apprehended them and moved on to avoid being in the vicinity if any hostile reinforcements came.

"After that point, any of our team's accounts of the passage of time is unreliable, since all of us spent a significant amount of time unconscious. We stopped at a river to clean our wounds at one point, and eat, but then Asuga managed to communicate that sleep was not a bodily requirement for her. I presume she ran nonstop from there on. The next thing I was aware of beyond Land of Iron forest is waking up again here."

The Hokage rubbed his chin, processing the information. "Twenty-seven Uzu citizens were taken three years ago, eleven among them Uzumaki, and eight among them shinobi. There were no signs of the others?"

"No, sir. The Uzumaki confirmed the deaths of all but two of the civilians. Presumably they, too, were used as subjects when it was confirmed that they held no ties with the others and held no worth as bargaining chips."

He hummed and turned to Asuga. "You are human?"

She blinked slowly at him, considering the question. Rumbled a response.

"She doesn't know," Enma conveyed, a dark expression overtaking his face. "She used to be."

"I see… Then, the transformation that gave you this form- can you reverse it?"

Another rumble, a touch more wary.

"Since the change of, modes? was triggered by Zouge's being in critical condition, it can only be, uh, turned off? changed back? by him. When he's no longer in critical, that is." Enma idly scratched his cheek, gaze never leaving Asuga. She still made occasional incomprehensible gestures, but for the most part seemed to have gotten the hang of communicating.

"Ah," the Hokage nodded agreeably. "Of course. So is that to say that the change was a sort of defense mechanism?"

"Yes."

"What does it do besides increase physical abilities? Other supplementary effects?"

"Yes."

"This blood contract seems to be rather more complex than the average if it's able to affect one holder based on the physical state of another."

"It's part Uzumaki design, she says."

"I see…"

Nobody really seemed to know what to say to that, at least in her presence. Asuga simply continued to observe them passively.

The elite-leader made an almost imperceptible shift of weight, catching the attention of every elite in the room alongside the leaders and Asuga. It was a test- and testament- to each individual's level of skill, and not one of them missed the way Asuga's attention had instantly flickered to them at the movement.

"Those creatures," the elite-leader spoke for the first time in a voice that reminded Asuga of unheard rivers concealed in the depths of ancient forests. Quietly powerful. "Please elaborate."

"Untrained in shinobi arts," Fukuro spoke up, "but capable of using chakra, and capable of fighting on that level. Body enhancement, elemental manipulation for the better ones. None were armed, so they probably can't use weapons. Presumably, they'd started off as human, but their physical appearances were warped, twisted, with what looked like mixes of animal traits. Fur, claws, tails, wings, feathers, abnormal coloration. A few seemed to have developed poison. No two looked the same. No genjutsu, no taijutsu. Deteriorated intelligence and self-awareness. They seemed to be running on instinct."

"How would you compare them to Asuga here?"

"Dumber," Fukuro replied firmly, one hand loosely curled over a fold in the thin cover over her lap. "Less intelligent by far. On average about the level of a non-ninken dog. Asuga is perfectly coherent. She's stronger than all the others we saw, too. We only saw her fight after sustaining heavy injuries, and not extensively, but what we did see and the discharges of chakra we sensed when she went back place her at least on the border of S-rank territory at the time." Another round of spikes in tension. "I don't think she's trained in the shinobi arts either, but her chakra control is exceptional and we've yet to get a good measure on the total size of her reserves. Jounin-level speed and reflexes, and high stamina and pain tolerance."

"And the creatures, do any remain?"

"Most were in cages when we went in. Those died in the self-destruct for the most part. It might be best to ask Asuga, actually."

[Went back for them. No more now.]

Enma translated.

She could not see the elite-leader's expression. She was also sure that their questions for her were blatant tests, though she did not know what they were looking for. "You killed them?"

[Yes.]

"Why?"

[Would chase. Asuga, friends, injured, weakened. Leave back open, not good. Clean up, then leave.]

Fukuro's hand curled a little less loosely around the folds in her covers, but said nothing. This really was her leader, or at least a superior, it seemed, and it was not her place to interrupt. Asuga did not resent her for it- she understood.

"Were they not, to say, like you? You didn't feel anything about killing them?"

Ah. Were they afraid she would turn on them without cause, like the red-ones had accused? [Not like. Ones changed most not able think in words, only wants, hungers. Ones changed little only think for selves. Many times tried kill Asuga to steal food, before. Both. Or when masters say to. Not friends. No feel for them. Not for long time.]

"Why are you different?" They cocked their head. "Why should we believe you're different?"

She tilted her head, mirroring them. Blinked. [Why do I need make you believe? You not my Master.] Straightforward, curious.

Laughing lightly, the Hokage redirected the conversation. "That's right, how rude of us. We never did do proper introductions. How about we start over from there?" He smiled disarmingly, not quite the open warmth of her Master, but not the deceptive expression of the masters either. "I am Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, or that is to say, its head and protector. My friend here goes by the name Kamaitachi, and serves as my ANBU General. The one you spoke with earlier, Enma, is my contracted summons partner.

"As for that point you brought up just now, allow me to try to explain. I do not know how much you know about what is going on in the world right now, but to sum it up, we are at war. Already there are those who are beginning to call it the Second Great Shinobi War, and the previous Great Shinobi War, the First. We are very grateful that you have aided our own, but we have many enemies, all of whom would be glad to infiltrate our ranks and wreck whatever havoc they can. We cannot be sure that you are not one of them. Even then, we must also discern whether you are a threat to our people, intentionally or not, as it is our responsibility to protect our own. As you know, I have promised Zouge that you will be treated fairly. Please help us do so."

Asuga blinked at him slowly, processing the information. They were asking for her cooperation. They were asking for proof of allegiance. They were asking her to understand why they did not yet fully trust her.

She could do that.

But only with her Master's input.

Of course, seeing as they'd gone to the trouble of explaining things for her, she would do her best to be forthright with them as well.

[Asuga semi-awakened form is part control, manipulation. But first part is seals. On Asuga, many seals, many uses. On Asuga head, here,] she concentrated a sliver of chakra into the ink camouflaged with her fur until it lit up with white-silver lines, [is also seal. The masters never allowed creatures speak. Asuga never learned before Master. Answer was this.]

"Memories," the elite-leader, Kamaitachi, murmured in a mix of intrigue and something muted.

[Memories,] Asuga agreed.

"And here I was about to suggest the Yamanaka's," the Hokage mused. Catching her eye, he explained, "They're a clan known for their mind-walking techniques. They can also view others' memories in that way, among other things."

[Probably bad idea. Many seals on Asuga, many safeguards against theft.]

The Hokage's brow creased slightly. "Theft?"

She blinked. Tilted her head back the other way. [Yes. Asuga is weapon.]

"I… see…" The crease deepened.

Well, that wasn't entirely so. Not anymore. [Asuga created to be weapon,] she amended, and admitted, [Master said Asuga not weapon.] Master said Asuga more. She didn't really understand. Master said he would explain. Master said he would show Asuga. So Asuga called Master Master. And Asuga followed.

The Hokage, Kamaitachi, and Enma shared looks she couldn't interpret in the slightest. To one side, Fukuro signed something with a hand that Kamaitachi gave a brief nod of acknowledgement to. "I see," the Hokage repeated. "Thank you for that explanation. It was rather… clarifying. Please do continue to share your thoughts like that, it will make it easier to understand your situation and less so to jump to flawed conclusions." She blinked in acknowledgement. A reasonable request, beyond the strangeness in giving her opinion. Clarity was good.

"About what you said before, though, about your memories. How does it work?

[Master has greatest access. But secondary Masters can see. Others, if Asuga want share. Can share many things. Sight, sound, smell, taste, feel, chakra. All senses shared. No mistakes in recall, only things perceived.]

Enma broke off from translating to ask, "Can you explain the differences in all these masters you keep mentioning before we go further? I understand there are differences, I can practically hear the capital letters, but a bit of clarification wouldn't hurt."

She hesitated for a second, agreed, but didn't know how to put it. She'd never had to share her thoughts with others before. Even the way she categorized things for herself was often subject to instinct and change, just as much as the masters' and other creatures' moods were.

[In that place, many masters, many kinds. Know many things, tell what do to change creatures. Cut creatures open and put back together. Broke things, fixed things. Wrote seals, made strange medicine. Made things hot, made things cold, made things hurt.

[Secondary Masters have position in command matrix seal. Can be more than one. Give orders. Asuga can resist, do slower, do messy, but must obey. Can take Asuga to battle, fight commands. Limited access to Asuga's seals.

[Only one Master. All access to seals. Direct commander in battle, always obey. Registered in highest control position on command matrix. Before, never compatible. Seal never took. Zouge first and only.]

"So, in non-literal terms, specialists of sorts, people with whips, and mind-controllers. Good to know."

The Hokage did not deign the commentary worth commenting further on. "Do you know why Zouge was the first?"

[If ask red-ones, will say is because Asuga have no fear or dislike of. Will say is because no instinct prevent. This wrong. Is because Asuga reject others before. But Master is Asuga's Master.]

"Are there any others besides Zouge remaining that belong to any of those three categories?"

[No.]

"You're sure of this?"

[The masters never left facility, and most not very strong. Died in self-destruct. And Asuga cleaned. Only three secondary masters, strongest of the fighters. Friends killed them.]

The Hokage rubbed his chin. "So then, this memory seal, it would probably be best if we waited for Zouge to use it, since he would have the most control. The only problem is that we've no clue when he'll wake up."

They wanted to use the secondary Masters' access. She had anticipated this since mentioning it, and accepted that it was probably a necessary compromise, one that her Master could override easily if he so chose later, but the thought of it still left her uneasy. If that was the case…

[Other option. Asuga can initiate share. Can even share with many at once. Drawback is amount shared much more limited. Not all senses at once. And less control. Asuga not able control which.]

The Hokage hummed and shared a few hand signs with Kamaitachi. "For the moment, that does sound like our best bet for at least a preliminary check. Let's hold off on doing anything for now, though, and see if Zouge wakes up. We would also like to get a few people to meet you, to ensure that your seals won't do you or anyone else harm, and that they really do what you think they do. You understand." She did. She agreed to this.

"Which brings us back to Kamaitachi's earlier question, I suppose," the Hokage mused. "Why are you different? Clearly you are, since Fukuro's descriptions of the creatures' and your behavior are completely different. No need to convince us further there. But why would they lose their minds, and not you?"

She didn't know why she didn't lose her mind like the others, she had to admit, but the reason why she was different- [Reason, all ones could be like, dead. Different, because no others.]

"Dead?"

[The masters' changes very dangerous. High mortality rates.]

"I see," said the Hokage again, hand at his chin. "Thank you for your cooperation, Asuga. That will be all for now. Please rest. We will send some people to check your condition later."

* * *

Time passed. The world outside the room hummed with activity, rose, crested, receded.

The signatures of the red-ones clustered together in a spot perhaps a hundred meters away in the same building. She watched them.

Dobutsu was the next to wake. Hai soon followed. Fukuro explained everything that had happened to them. She watched, listened. Accepted gentle touches from all three, her sprawled form large enough to reach each with minimal movement.

The white-clad doctors orbited all of them constantly, checking and rechecking things, writing things down, coming and leaving. She watched them.

The elites watching in the shadows switched out with others multiple times, explaining some things in passing to their replacements. She watched them. They watched her.

Others came. Two elites, a Yamanaka and a seal master, they introduced themselves as. They looked long and hard at the seal on her head, and a few others. The command matrix elicited a particularly vehement reaction, though both reassured her it was mostly stable when Fukuro and the other friends asked. She watched them carefully.

A doctor she recognized by signature, that had examined only her, that had spoke to the Hokage when he'd left, returned to hover around her. The veterinarian, she presumed. A woman that did not wear the white-garbs, and smelled strongly of something canine. She watched her.

Time passed. The world outside the room hummed with activity, rose, crested, receded.

Her Master woke up.

* * *

Asuga was the first aware of her Master's return to consciousness- she felt it in the stirring in the bond.

Nudging aside a startled doctor, she nosed her head into the spot by her Master's left, the side of his gut wound, and waited, ignoring the flustered fuss the doctors briefly made at her. They gave up after a minute when the various contraptions they'd hooked her Master up to began beeping and whistling and flashing little lights and symbols. Her Master came to slowly, blinking silver eyes into focus before drifting to the side- to her.

A wan smile touched his face. "Asuga."

Her purr lightly rattled the nearby contraptions.

Edging into his personal space, she nosed the exposed cheek, the one left uncovered by his half-donned mask, and checked his fever. It was still there, but no longer the building, burning heat she'd carried on her back. Her Master chuckled at the brush of her whiskers, then winced.

"ANBU-san," one of the doctors cleared his throat as he came up on her Master's other side. "It's good to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

Her Master opened his mouth to respond, but then paused. His brow wrinkled. "Strangely well, actually." He considered this. "How much are you pumping me with, and how long have I been out?"

"You've been in-village for about two days now. By your team's reports, we estimate it's been about five days total since you acquired your injuries." Her Master's eyes assessed the room, noting his alive and awake teammates listening in attentively. "As for the medication you've been prescribed, you're on the good stuff, but you should still be feeling some level of discomfort. You nearly got bisected, you know. It's a miracle you were around long enough to get emergency medical treatment."

"I know," her Master muttered ruefully under his breath, expression calmly blank. Asuga tilted her head curiously at him, recognizing the stoicism of the other elites. He twitched a finger, and a whisper of something unconsciously wanting trickled through the bond. Asuga obligingly moved to wiggle her muzzle underneath the hand, hungry for the friendly touch after becoming accustomed to it during their shared captivity, and decided that the neutral ways of the elites must be another of their rules of uniformity. Her Master was still the same underneath, and that was all that mattered.

For the next while, the doctor asked her Master questions and for him to do little things like wiggle his toes. The warm hand remained on the bridge of her nose all the while. Finally, the doctor finished his notes, made a few adjustments to the machines, and left the room. An exhausted group of remaining white-clads slowly trickled out after him, until all that remained were her Master, the friends, and the elites in the shadows. Asuga had no doubt her Master and the friends knew they were there, and was reassured they were alright with their presence when her Master glanced to one of them, shot a brief smile of recognition, and used his free hand to make a few signs.

The friends conversed quietly with her Master, each checking up with him and each other and even her as well, and caught each other up on the situation as they knew it. Asuga lowered her head to lay on the ground when she sensed her Master's arm tiring, and he let the arm drape over the edge of his bed to rest with fingers half-curled in the fur on her forehead.

The Hokage eventually came by, Kamaitachi and Enma in tow, and her Master gave them his report, supplemented by Dobutsu and Hai in places. It was much the same as Fukuro's, though included a summary of the time he'd shared with Asuga in the facility and an emphatic vouch on her behalf. The fact that she'd shared her rations with him and did what she could for his injuries likely did much to increase her standing in their eyes. Most of the last of the wariness in their attitudes towards her evaporated, though the fact did remain that she was stuck in a combat-ready mode until her Master had recovered enough chakra to manipulate premade seals without harm to himself. The doctors had estimated another day would be sufficient.

A brief bit of commentary was given on what the red-ones were saying. Apparently they had not let up on the backstabbing-killer-monster angle on Asuga, though had not since resorted to violence under the Uzukage's close scrutiny. The Hokage reassured all present that all circumstances and perspectives would be taken into account before anything was decided on the handling of anyone, and that included Asuga's yet-unseen memories.

It was confirmed that they would try accessing her seals the next day and were left to rest. The friends quickly returned to sleep, though lighter and rousable. Her Master slept, too, deeply and in fitful dozes in turns.

The elites in the shadows continued their interval guards. They no longer kept so wary an eye on her. Together, she and they watched over the injured in an almost comfortable silence.

* * *

The doctors didn't like it when she stood up, as Asuga found when she moved to rise while a few had come to check up on them. Seeing as they were not threats and several signatures with the potential to be were moving from their previous stationary positions in another area of the building towards them, she ignored the strongly disapproving white-clads that didn't quite dare to try forcing the issue.

Another day had passed.

She was carefully circling around her Master's bed with nonthreatening, plodding, silent pads when the Hokage swept into the room, the Uzukage at his side and Kamaitachi and Enma at his shoulders. He gave her a distantly searching look, though said nothing as he moved further into the room to leave the doorway clear. She'd reoriented herself to a satisfactory degree- injured back to her Master's wounded side, the full length of her body between him and the entrance- by the time the next group of visitors stepped through the door, and slowly, deliberately laid down, eyes on the red-ones all the while as she settled herself, claws pointedly flexing, once, twice, wickedly sharp points unsheathing and resheathing, another line of defense between her Master and them.

The oldest red-one narrowed his eyes at her as the others shuffled tensely and shot her a variety of looks ranging from wary dislike to hateful loathing. The oldest red-one said nothing, though, so neither did the rest. They would stand behind him, as they always had. At the very least, they knew it was their unity that had helped them survive the facility. That, and that which they had sacrificed on their path.

The Hokage was the one to open the conversation.

"It is my understanding that some among us have not been properly introduced to each other, so let us start there. I am Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure. This is Uzumaki Shin'en, the Sandaime Uzukage of Uzushiogakure." He gestured to the Uzukage, and then to the red-ones. "Uzumaki Sandaza, Morifu, Hurode, Kabeko, and Hekimaru, all hailing from the Uzumaki Clan." Another gesture, this time to her Master and the friends. "Team Aki, led by Zouge-taicho. Dobutsu, Fukuro, Hai." A final gesture, this time to her. "And, of course, Asuga." A round of twitching from the red-ones, but nothing outrightly forward.

"So far, we have managed to get a rough idea of what occurred during the mission that brought us all to this point. For the sake of clarity, allow me to explain the circumstances surrounding our current situation.

"About three years ago now, Uzushio was attacked by the combined forces of Iwagakure and Kirigakure in an attempt to destroy it out of fear of it and the Uzumaki clan's reputation as the home of skilled seal masters. During the attack, a number of Uzushio citizens disappeared in the chaos. They were initially listed as MIA, but a number of sightings were reported of strange creatures controlled by masked shinobi equipped with nondescript, unaffiliated gear. Some reports from later in the conflict mentioned that they seemed to be carrying bodies. As they had not been attacking any Uzu-nin, and even clashed with a few Iwa or Kiri, they were generally assumed to be friendlies and let be, since it was perceived that there were bigger problems at the time."

The Uzukage moved half a step forward to take over the conversation, presumably being the more knowledgeable one on the topic. "More thorough investigations came when one report mentioned a suspicion that the creatures had been under henge, and that one had attempted to attack its handler before being killed on the spot. We didn't know what we were looking at at the time, but then it was noted that a good number of these sightings had taken place around the areas in which some of our foremost missing seal masters had last been seen. That was the point that it became a kidnapping investigation."

"We were taken unawares for the most part," the oldest red-one, Sandaza, confirmed. "Though some of us were confronted with hostage situations and surprised from behind. They took a few civilians, too, to use as leverage. Mostly friends or relatives. "

The Uzukage nodded. "We deduced that your sealing skills were their target at that point. You mentioned before that they needed them in their experiments to create the creatures. Was there a particular reason why?"

Sandaza scowled. "They believed that seals were the most stable and reliable method, and most versatile. I'm afraid I have to agree with them there. Their more science-based attempts were much less… successful." He eyed Asuga with his customary distaste. She merely stared back levelly. "Especially considering what they were trying to meddle with."

"Nature energy," Enma interjected.

"Yes," Sandaza seemed surprised. "Nature energy, or natural energy, as it were. How did you know?"

"Asuga used it before. When she broke your chains."

"Ah." Sandaza remembered. He returned to scowling. "Yes. That."

"You said that they bargained your lives for your cooperation," the Uzukage redirected. "Better conditions for more _enthusiastic_ cooperation. Torture for failure to meet expectations or deadlines."

"Yes," Sandaza agreed. "The usual coercion tactics. Carrot and stick. We did our best to keep as many of us alive as possible. They had hostages and seal masters both in excess and were not afraid to remind us of that fact. We believed our return with information to friendly hands outweighed the costs. I will not deny we participated in… less than savory acts in order to survive."

"While not something to be proud of, it is understandable," the Uzukage was forced to agree. Sandaza nodded sharply, the slightest touch of something smug in the movement, affirmed in his rightness.

"Despite our best efforts, however, our numbers steadily dwindled over the years. They knew which among us were the more skilled and saved us for last, punishing the others for our failings. A few tried to commit suicide when they realized someone they loved would pay for their mistakes. It only happened once. Mariko-san. When they found out, they killed everyone related to her instead of trying to blackmail the rest of us with them. Nobody tried it again.

"A few also tried to escape. There were three attempts in total. Every one failed, and more were killed in punishment. We eventually stopped trying, deciding to play the long game, to try to gain their trust, to wait for our chance.

"Team Aki came at a most opportune time. The facility housed maybe four, five thousand total inhabitants. Around eight hundred of those were combat-trained, if not all considered true shinobi even on the level of genin. A thousand civilian equivalents, give or take. Relatives, hostages. Five hundred on staff for the experiments, mostly versed enough to serve as nurses. And a fluctuating number of experimental subjects. Fewest at any one point was about a hundred, from a time shortly before we were recruited. While we were there, it was an average of between one to two thousand, peaking at three thousand once. One of the more large-scale test subject acquisition operations had just been undertaken at the time, so about a fourth of the combat-capable forces had just came back and were below their usual standing strength. They'd brought back about two hundred fifty new subjects, and also had to handle initial processing procedures, which left the whole place slightly more distracted than they'd usually be. Normally, one bimonthly run would bring in maybe fifty.

"We gave Team Aki all the intel we could. The plan was to hopefully take out the top three overseers of the base first, before any alarms went out, and either with the alarms or once they were dead a clone left outside would use the summoning seals we'd hacked together to bypass security and pull us to a location outside. We're not up to snuff after all this time, and were never really frontline-oriented. We'd have only gotten in Team Aki's way.

"From there, Team Aki would have continued down the branch with the captive containment blocks." Sandaza gave a reservedly pointed glance to each of the friends, which Dobutsu stepped forward to pick up smoothly, nodding.

"We are not too sure as to the full extent of the containment blocks, but the facility's layout was relatively straightforward despite the heavy application of seal traps and containment measures. We believe most of it was mainly there for the creatures." A couple of the red-ones standing behind Sandaza distantly nodded in confirmation. "Our target was to trigger the facility's self-destruct seal, located on the lowest level, and keep an eye out for the captain. We reached the level with some obstruction, where we engaged with what appeared to be a last hold-out of some of the strongest creatures. The captain was there, sharing a cell with Asuga."

Dobutsu paused briefly to gather his words. "At this point, the exact sequence of events is a bit jumbled, but we were able to agree on several points. The final group of high-ranking facility personnel in the safe room on the level had a falling out. One side advocated triggering the self-destruct and destroying all evidence, including all the creatures. The other side wanted to use Asuga to buy them enough time to escape. They fought over a whip that appeared to be used to control the creatures, as well as a number of seals drawn into the wall. We believe the first set that was triggered was the releases to Asuga's restraining seals. The second set seemed to be contingent on the first, and appeared to fail when the restraints released. We believe this set's function was as a type of killing seal for Asuga. The third set was activated after a longer struggle. In this period, the surviving self-destruct advocate attempted once more to kill Asuga with a poisoned, tagged projectile weapon. Zouge-taicho shielded Asuga, and we engaged the survivors to provide cover. Asuga formed a blood contract with Zouge-taicho-"

"It did _what_?!"

Dobutsu cut off as if to afford Sandaza a frown from behind his mask. The red-one had jerked forward two steps on impulse, eyes wide and angry and completely disbelieving. It wasn't just him, either- behind him, the other red-ones were unabashedly staring at the elite with similar looks of nausea, though with a healthy dose more of fear than anger.

Calmly, evenly, Dobutsu repeated, "Asuga initiated and formed a blood contract with Zoug-"

"Impossible!" The declaration was firm, disbelieving, confident in the analysis. "Secondary contracts can only be opened with a complicated multi-faceted support seal and a large number of restraining and suppression seals while the divine beast is in a state of suspended animation. The primary position in the command matrix seal has never been successfully opened- it's killed every attempted contractee. We _designed_ it to kill every attempted contractee. It was _never meant to work_."

Immediately, Asuga reached inside herself and snatched up the bond, pouring over it with a scathing pin-point focus, vetting it for any signs of instability, volatility, or malformation, sidelining the exterior perceived drop in temperature, even as a small voice inside her told her she knew what they spoke of had dealt with it already. She kept an eye on the situation, but until she could confirm no untoward effects would beset her Master they were a secondary concern.

The Hokage narrowed his eyes, expression stony. "Explain."

"In all our work, we had no choice but to provide results, but we did our best to drag our feet, slip in flaws and trips and pitfalls where we could in the designs, just generally make everything as inefficient and conditional as possible. When drawing up the control matrix, we wanted to base its structure on the most volatile and indecipherable foundation we could. We figured what better to muck up the translation of orders into something the feral creature could comprehend than the uncomprehending feral creature itself? Since we do not know as much about the creature's mind as we might like, whatever loophole you might have managed to slip through most likely occurred at that stage. However," Sandaza quickly added, "That was merely the failsafe. Before whatever 'message' the primary master might send can even be processed, it's bounced back to them as a sort of double-check, to ensure that the signals sent are neither interference nor coincidentally chakra residue of a harmonized frequency. We looped the rebound and planted an additional element at that point, a simple pulse amplification. When any sort of signal is sent, it gets bounced back at a frequency and strength greater than each previous time by a factor of five. In layman's terms-"

"-it basically rebounds back to the contractee until it's strong enough to obliterate their minds," the Uzukage finished grimly.

Asuga instantly relaxed. She did know what the red-one was talking about. It turned out the startle was for naught- she'd long since been aware of all the inefficient little bits of extra seals. She would have wondered at the strangeness of the uncontrollable impulse if she weren't so occupied with the conversation.

When she'd be left to herself in the facility, she'd made herself thoroughly familiar with every facet of her body and seals. If the constant state of injury had done anything for her besides increase her pain tolerance to impervious heights, it had also given her a high level of physical self-awareness. She usually let the seals function as they would, knowing how they had many small barbs and imperfections that made her use something of a double-edged blade to the masters, but during the escape she'd had precious little time to act, and had directly circumvented everything unessential, including and especially all the various little snag-points.

"See, this is what we were trying to warn you of! This _thing_ is a viciously cunning beast- your faith in it is misplaced! We must-"

"So you're saying," her Master calmly interrupted, voice coldly blank and smooth, entirely uncharacteristic of a man who had not spoken for days prior, "that merely connecting with Asuga should have killed me."

"Instantly! Y-"

"And that beyond merely connecting with Asuga, any subsequent communication of any kind through the seals should have killed me."

"Yes, th-"

"And yet here I am?"

"The divine beast is unversed enough in human language to have possibly switched out interpretations of intent-"

"But you see..." Her Master canted his head ever so slightly, in the manner of a wolf singling out the weakest prey from the herd.

"-whatever malfunction might ha-"

"I did give her an order."

Sandaza scowled seethingly, frustrated at being repeatedly cut off. "You previous speech outside the gates was unstructured enough to possibly be passed over-"

"Before that." Her Master's gaze left the antagonistic man for his leader, his Hokage. "When she asked for orders so that she could save our sorry hides from being buried alive."

He tilted his chin up, balancing on the knife-edge of challenging. The Hokage remained placid, waiting.

"I told _her_ to live."

The two shinobi held each other's level gaze- silently communicating, silently understanding.

"She made sure _all_ of us lived."

_She had deliberately interpreted the command in their favor._

Slowly, consideringly, the Hokage gave her Master the briefest, slightest of nods.

"Are you _insane_\- Giving that sort of vague blanket order-" Sandaza spluttered disbelievingly before apparently deciding that the question of the man's sanity really couldn't matter less to him, "Regardless of what it's been doing, the fact remains that it's overridden the protocols-"

"And thereby prevented me from dying."

"-_potentially including_ those that subordinate it to the contractee of the command matrix seal itself," Sandaza resolutely spoke over her Master, determined to be heard, "and therefore rendering the point of it being under control null."

"I never said I was _compelling_ her to play nice." Her Master enunciated the word with detached distaste. "And no one ever made a point of her being 'under control' because of the blood contract. It was simply stated as a fact. Asuga is perfectly capable of differentiating friend from foe herself. In fact, I clearly remember stating something along the lines of 'she doesn't need a leash,' like those entirely uncalled-for chains of yours." Her Master's tone was completely neutrally polite for all the implied meanings of his words. Sandaza's face, which had been slowly rising in color through the heated discussion, was nearing the shades of fresh sunburns.

"Yes, thank you both for that clarification," the Hokage interjected. _We can further address that matter later_. Internally, he was a bit baffled by Zouge's behavior. He had no qualms with giving him some slack, though. Yes, the ANBU captain was a good man with a kind heart, but he was also a highly-trained professional. Then again, knowing that the massive… well, beast, in front of them was actually a human child was no doubt different from actually having _seen_ it, to say nothing of having been held and possibly tortured together. Such would probably skew anyone's perspective.

Zouge took the not-so-subtle cue in step to push on with his recount. "The self-destruct seal was triggered. Asuga shielded us from the initial explosions and the following cave-in. The bulk of the worst of our injuries were sustained from this. She had to pull us all up to the surface, where we were immediately assaulted. Asuga dealt with them, and carried us out of the combat zone before returning and neutralizing the threat. She returned with the Uzumaki-"

"It was _hunting_ us, it was only by coincidence that we happened to stumble back on your location," Sandaza insisted. Nobody seemed inclined to take him at face value anymore.

"-and Team Aki reassessed the situation…" Her Master continued with the debrief, with the friends chipping in from time to time on what little remained to report and the friend-friends' captains taking over at the end.

The Hokage rubbed his chin. "Sandaza-san, I notice that through all our conversations there has been a clear understanding that these people that took you and your fellows wanted you for the use of your expertise in their experiments, and that these experiments were on humans with the apparent intent to enhance combat potential. However, I don't believe you've yet to mention exactly what their final goal was. Would you happen to be aware of it?"

Sandaza straightened stiffly, abruptly, and a pensive sort of air came to him. "We are, actually. They did not succeed fully, but… they were well on their way to achieving it."

His audience did not miss the way he avoided stating exactly what that goal was.

The red-one ran a darting gaze across the others, only the briefest of hesitance before he visibly steeled himself.

"They were attempting to artificially create a bijuu."

Silence.

Sandaza raked a hand through his blood-red hair in agitation and sighed gustily. "They were doing other things, too. Focused on human weapons. We know they were working on binding the creatures into a proper clan-style summons contract rather than the usual single-use scroll individual contracts. But the creatures were mainly a side-product of their bijuu-making efforts." He gestured to Asuga with as much distaste as Zouge had used when addressing his attitude towards her. "This one is the closest any of them got. The beast lord, the divine beast, the child of the forest. They had no shortage of nicknames for it, and all of them were for good reasons- _dangerous_ reasons."

To one side, Kamaitachi tilted his head slightly. "She called herself a weapon."

"Did it, now?" Sandaza seemed unable to decide if it was a good thing or not that Asuga apparently understood her 'place'. "It is disconcerting that it acknowledges that fact."

"I personally find it more _disconcerting_ that _she_ seems to acknowledge it a bit _too_ much." Her Master reached for her, and she obediently shifted so that he could reach over and bury the fingers of one hand into the thick fur of her ruff once more. "Technically she's a minor, but from previous interactions with her I believe she has fully developed reasoning and comprehension skills. Rather than talk over her head, perhaps we could take her side of things into account now that we all have an understanding of the situation."

"I'm afraid I _must_ protest the use of a summons that previously admitted to being unable to fully understand other species as a translator-"

"But of course."

"-seeing as-" Sandaza abruptly cut himself off. Stared at her Master. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it. "...Could you repeat that?"

"Miscommunication would be a terrible shame."

Another stunned second of blankness, and then Sandaza's expression was blooming into one of grim triumph and satisfaction as he opened his mouth once more-

-and was smoothly cut off. "Therefore I suggest now to be a suitable time to try reversing whatever process that changed her into this form, as well as the memory-sharing technique she mentioned."

Her Master seemed to be quite satisfied with the incensed spike in Sandaza's chakra signature. Asuga made note.

Rather than directly resort to confrontation again, though, the red-one narrowed his eyes and spoke in a toneless, black voice. "The semi-awakened state it is currently holding is indeed much more dangerous than its stand-by state- perhaps ten times faster at recovering chakra, and with all the physical advantages of its changed form. As part of the stimulus, the rebalancing of the various hormones and other chemicals affecting its body make for a more aggressive, more proactive disposition. It would not be a bad idea to reverse the change. It has never held it so long before, so we also can't predict what other side effects there might be."

The Hokage hummed, patting the exasperated-looking Uzukage on the shoulder at his long-absent subordinate's behavior. There wasn't much to be done for it. Confronting it would only sidetrack them and waste time. "I was informed earlier today that simple chakra manipulation should be alright for you, Zouge, so long as you do not outright expend it. You are still recovering from your ordeals. Do not overexert yourself."

Zouge nodded agreeably, glancing at the side of Asuga's face. She had not so much as blinked since the Uzumaki had stepped into the room, let alone look away from them.

"Asuga?"

A single large, thickly furred ear swiftly swiveled to perk in his direction.

The rest of her head remained riveted in place.

She stared at the Uzumaki.

Suppressing amusement, her Master ran his fingers soothingly through her ruff. "So, what do I do?"

"The command matrix located on-"

"I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I was asking Asuga. I thought she would be better aware of her own condition since you'd so clearly stated you didn't know 'what other side effects there might be'."

Sandaza gritted his teeth. He said nothing. Let the fool prove his own foolishness if he was so eager to.

Keeping her eyes on the Uzumaki, and Sandaza in particular, Asuga lifted her head back to half turn it to bring her muzzle level with her Master's face, watching out of her corner of her eye all the while. Nuzzling him blindly and bumping his outstretched arm further down her back, she allowed a trickle of chakra to race through her body and over the camouflaged black ink carved into her skin and fur. Grey-silver-white light rippled over her, tracing the words and symbols in an initial flaring pulse as she evened out the flow and sustained it, permitting them to glow softly and regularly. It was becoming more difficult to regulate chakra- despite how much more stable it was than anything any other creature had attained, her form was still volatile in nature. Any light tap into the influx of energy her surroundings provided her would result in an overwhelming tidal wave of chakra.

The others watched on in rapt attention as her Master shifted his hand over the glowing lines of the command matrix. Asuga reached for their bond and urged him to grab onto her chakra through the seal, to spin it, twist it, slide the interlocking edges into place against the other connected seals in the grid grafted onto her skin, into her very chakra. She felt the moment the seals clicked together, helped buffer the rush of chakra that flooded through her Master's hand and into his body, confirming his own condition to be non-life-threatening before releasing the protocols designed to ensure her ability to defend him.

A dense sort of pressure fell over the space around Asuga as she reluctantly let her eyes slip closed and began to glow. Thin, swirling streams of deep purples and electric blues fluttered over her, illuminating the few stark stripes of white not covered in plaster and bandages amid the sea of inky ebony of her feathered fur before dissipating into the air like morning mist beneath the midday sun. The light emanating from her body was reminiscent of ultraviolet black light- there but not, dark but light. It was obvious that the light was the insubstantial form of chakra given substance, but somehow it fell on a range outside the blues of the usual visible spectrum.

A miniature whirlwind of chakra streams formed around her, thick and moving slow enough to have been mistaken for floating water, and within it Asuga's massive form sort of… _fluctuated_. _Rippled_. A massive shudder wracked the condensed agglomeration of raw chakra and a wave of pure energy sort of just _scattered_ in a broken shell of chakra outward.

The sound of flesh splitting, pulling itself apart, echoed with a wet, gruesome reverberation around the deathly silent room an instant before the thick smell of fresh blood and disturbed infection assaulted the sensitive senses of all those present.  
Zouge winced. Asuga's wounds had reopened.

Her form began to shrink, slowly, slowly, sloughing off layers upon layers as excess mass converted to raw energy- rich purples and blues and tinges of greens and nigh-invisible greysilverwhiteblacks- that promptly evaporated into nothingness. Chakra thrummed in the air, potent and volatile and yet unaccessible to the common shinobi. The air they breathed was a mess of contradicting signals, the chakra of life incarnate and the filtered hospital air of pain and rot and death.

They watched as she shrank- and shrank, and shrank. Smaller, smaller, until there was no doubt that she was a child, a small child, a child so tiny that she could not possibly have reached her double digits yet. The form warped, fur and feather retreating, unusually slim, corded limbs and more-lean-than-probably-healthy torso compressing and shriveling and withering away until one might have thought only a skeleton might be left in the end. And for all that the Hokage was the Hokage, and the Uzukage was the Uzukage, and the elites were elites, none could fully suppress the most miniscule, niggling awareness of the _wrongness_ of it all.

Finally, the shedding chakra began to thin, drying up to a trickling stop as the glow began to fade. A large splattering of blood smeared the floors, black and thick and congealed in some places and thin and pink and almost clear in others. The large strips of plaster and bandages that had covered the worst of Asuga's hurts lay strewn amongst the red, now far too large for her. The more the light faded, the more obvious the trails of weeping wounds became on the now distinctly human child.

With one last pulse, the glow of chakra faded fully, leaving behind a tiny scrap of a child. Where previously the great beast's chest had been nearly level with a fully-grown man's head while laying down, the sitting child, coltish legs splayed out beneath her, barely came up to an adult's knees. Long, ragged, unkempt hair spilled from the crown of her head down the length of her back, obscuring parts of her face and doing a pitiful job of screening her chest and torso. She was naked, and so her body was on full display- discolored skin, a different shade every two inches, and a second look brought on the ghastly realization that the discolorations were scars- thick and thin, long and short, cuts and punctures and bruises and welts and burns and miscellaneous other marks of damage. Over them, the newer still-inflamed, infected, open wounds scrawled red and weeping, a mess of jagged cuts and tears and cracked scabs and burns. Baby fat was entirely absent, leaving paper-thin skin to stretch over prominently protruding bones. What meat she had on her frame was all lean, stringy muscle that only seemed to exacerbate the projected image.

The room was utterly still. On one side, fingers twitching and fists clenching, the red-ones were eyeing the child as if she were a crippled tiger- and perhaps she was, in their eyes. The Hokage and Uzukage were stone-faced and unreadable. Team Aki was staring down the red-ones and checking up on the girl in turns. And in the half-shadowed corners of the room, the elites on guard were watching everyone.

A twitch of a muscle.

Attention snapped fully to the child.

Haltingly, the child tentatively raised her downturned face. The curtain of inky black hair, which now could be seen to glimmer dully with deep blues and purples in the light, parted to the sides of her face with the motion.

Finely lashed eyes fluttered open.

_Twin rings of concentric purple and gold, one inside the other, sharp and clear and precisely cut_.

The child tilted her head.

Stared at them deeply.

And blinked.

* * *

Notes:

I promise to get around to properly describing Asuga's physical form soon! Both of them! There's a reason for not doing so yet! Kind of! I mean- definitely! Yes!

I'm in a bit of a conundrum with Asuga's characterization and personality right now. I know where I want it to go and what she'll be like in the future and the vague details of the difficulties that she'll have in getting there, but I'm having some trouble moulding her as she is now... Hopefully she doesn't come off too inconsistent...


	6. Chapter 6

Hey guys! Hope you're all doing well enough in these difficult times. "May you live in interesting times," huh?

Unfortunately, my school has decided that it is an unspoken rule of the internet that if you're on it, you must have literally nothing else to waste your time on, so all my classes have literally dropped like triple the workload on us and I am legitimately dying of education overload. Seriously. *sob* This is the last chapter I have in my buffer between my current writing position and my posted chapters, so I am no longer able to guarantee any sort of regularity in my update rate. I'm not entirely certain as to how it shows, but if anything shows up with this story as 'updated' _before_ two months from now, most likely it is simply a touch-up of previous chapters' grammar and spelling. 99.999% chance it is _not_ an actual new chapter.

Don't worry, though! This is not to say that this story is in danger of being discontinued, because it most definitely _is not_! It's just, uh, no longer got a solid update schedule? Mmmm, let's go with that. Apologies in advance!

Ahh, now that all that depressing stuff is out of the way, we can get on to the story! As always, I love you all, you guys are the best, and I shall now shamelessly make my plea for reader attention! Read, review, fave, enjoy!

* * *

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death. (Actually, once again, not really, but maybe a touch of abandonment issues, if you get triggered by that sort of thing)

* * *

She was staring at the red-ones again, intense and focused, as if to make up for having to close her eyes during the change.

The red-ones stared back.

(The _entire room_ stared back.)

Out of all those present, they were the only ones not surprised by her appearance, though they did appear put off by the severity of her wounds for a moment.

"Asuga." Zouge was the first to find his voice. Swallowing thickly, he patted the side of his bed. "Why don't you come up here off the ground? We're going to have to re-bandage your wounds."

She complied, only compromising to take one eye off the red-ones to half-turn towards her Master. Gathering her legs beneath her, she sprang up like a cat, catching the edge of the bed with her hands and curling her body up to bring her feet to her hands and pull the rest of her weight up. The instant she had her balance she was facing down the red-ones again, her back once more to her Master. She settled back into the same sort of sitting position as she had been in on the ground, insides of her knees pressed to the ground, legs splayed bent on either side, hands flat next to her knees. A simple shift of weight would allow her to pounce directly into an offensive lunge at a moment's notice.

Mindful of her injuries, Zouge reached out and gently caught her around the waist. Tugging lightly, he was relieved when she moved with him willingly, allowing him to pull her up into his lap, though still refusing to take her eyes off the red-ones. Flashing through a series of hand signs at some of the ANBU on guard, he caught the first-aid kit tossed at him, placating Asuga's reflexive twitch at the sudden motion with one hand, and gestured in thanks. Opening it, he began to re-dress Asuga's wounds.

A few moments of quiet passed before Enma gave an explosive sigh. "Alright, I'll bite. Whatever's between you guys," he waved a hand between Asuga and the red-ones, "I'm going to go ahead and guess it's more than professional opinion or trying to stab each other on the road. Out with it."

Sandaza scowled at the Monkey King but spoke. "The divine beast played a large part in the deaths of many of our fellows, yes, and is a product of our own work, but we feel strongly that such an unpredictable and uncontrollable variable should not- is too- Such a thing as it should not exist. It is an abomination. All the creatures were. They _must_ be destroyed. _All_ of them."

"So you're not gonna tell us."

The haggard man bristled. "It is not a biased statement. It is _fact_. We were kept separately, alone or in smaller groups. When Kono's group attempted their escape, he took one of the creatures to boost their combat potential." Sandaza eyed Asuga with such accusation that there was no doubting the implication. He did not say it, but the words were there, hung invisible in the air. "Their group had no combat-capable shinobi besides himself, and even he specialized more in research. In the end, the creature turned on them, and they all died. The creatures are savage things. Unstable, selfish, bloodthirsty, unable to think beyond their next kill."

Enma raised an unimpressed brow and turned to Asuga. "Anything to add?"

Asuga twitched slightly but didn't take her eyes off the red-ones. Nudging at the bond, she conveyed the impression of _yes_ to her Master. She knew what they spoke of. She held more detailed information on it. She would share, if they wished her to.

Sandaza snorted. "Again, it _cannot speak_. Beyond whatever means you might have used earlier, human communication is beyond it. None of the creatures can speak. It was even part of the conditioning they did on the subjects before they lost all sense of reasoning."

"Asuga can speak," her Master calmly informed the others. "I taught her a bit before. She'd never spoken before that, though, or to anyone else." _She didn't know how. She'd never learned._ "Perhaps that's why she's hesitant."

"No, that is a separate matter. It's like I said earlier," Sandaza dismissed. "The semi-awakened state promotes aggression and proactive decision-making behavior. It's a defense mechanism to protect an injured master. Normally, they are conditioned and trained to only act on certain commands, while a control matrix enforces them. They do not _understand_ words. Besides, this one's matrix is compromised. Watch. Stand!"

Face still in that blank, watchful expression, Asuga curled her upper lip back and bared the lower half of two startlingly large canines in a silent snarl, invisible hackles rising as she dug her toes into the sheets and shifted as if in preparation to pounce because this red-one _dared_ command her, _dared_ attempt to usurp her Master, _dared_ to keep _standing there_ with that _self-satisfied triumphant sneer on his face_-

Zouge was instantly there, gentle hand on her back below the nape of her neck-

"-wait, no, Asuga-"

She stilled, fangs still half-bared in warning.

"No need for that, come sit back down…"

She sat.

"Come on, look at me Asuga, ignore them, the others've got them, look at me…"

She blinked.

She covered her teeth and swivelled her head and looked at her Master.

Warm silver-grey met her. His expression was still carefully blank, but she saw the slight way the corner of his mouth curled when she looked at him.

"That's right, ignore them. Just now, you said that you knew what that guy was talking about? Tell me about it. It's okay to talk. Ignore them."

She blinked.

Opened her mouth.

"Tel, Ms-tarr…"

Zouge flinched as if smacked. "Ah… that's… Please don't call me that. I've got my mask, right? So..."

"Zo-geh."

"Right. So, please don't call me 'Master'…"

Asuga instantly _wilted_. "Mah-str- not- As-ga, did raw-ng?" There was no inflection in her words, only a lisping slur around the bulky eye-teeth, but the way her whole form curled in on itself and he could practically _see_ her more bestial form's ears dropping like weights had been attached to the tips…

"Uh, no, it's not like that, it's just that… Ah, this is one of those things I needed to explain to you later. But it's not that, Asuga, you didn't do anything wrong. I just- you shouldn't need to call anyone that. Not in that kind of context. Ever. Okay?" He tapped her on the nose, eliciting a series of rapid blinks. "Anyone who makes you call them that is bad, and should not be listened to. Ever. _Ever_. Okay?"

She blinked. The wilting subsided slightly. "Yes, Zouge."

Zouge glanced over Asuga's shoulder at Sandaza. The man didn't seem able to decide whether to gape or scowl, and neither could his fellows for that matter. The man seemed to settle for mouthing _impossible, impossible_ to himself under his breath.

"So, what was that you were saying before, about the, uh, red-ones?" he prompted again.

She blinked. Tilted her head. "Cn-not trust. Asuga did n-t watch prop-ly b-fore, and Mas-ahh-Zou-ge and friends almost hurt when red-ones turned. Is not in nature to not-turn. In the end, always turn. Cannot trust." She pronounced the words carefully, rapidly grasping a better hold on what forms to shape her mouth into as she swiped a dry pink tongue over disproportionately large canines and worked her jaw, broken words coming out strangely rhythmic. "Can show memories. Asuga remembers. Asuga always remembers." She spared a stolen glance to blink at her audience gravely.

"Ah, yes, it is very helpful of you to agree to sharing so willingly," the Hokage smiled congenitally at the heavily scarred child. "But first, it is only polite to ask you things directly, rather than jump straight to rifling through your mind. Shall we do that first?"

A flicker of purple and gold- to the red-ones, to Zouge, to the Hokage, to Zouge.

Zouge nodded encouragingly at her, brushing the ragged edges of her hair out of her face between tying a knot on one bandage and beginning to wrap another. Reluctantly, Asuga shifted her gaze back to the Hokage's aged visage and kept it there, waiting.

"You said before that Zouge gave you the name 'Asuga'. Do you have any other?"

"Nno."

"You were brought to the facility like the others?"

"Yes."

"Where are you from?"

A blink, a tilt of the head. "From?"

"Where were you before you were brought to that place? The first place you can remember?"

"Asuga was… in white place. Cold. A place where the sky cried slowly."

"In that place, were you with anyone? Did someone take care of you?"

"Yessnno. Nnnot know, for sure. May-be She? Only remember… Cold, but, also, hot. Place was burning. Asuga was burning. Other people, they screaming. Running. Ones-that-killed came to take."

"Did you run too?"

"No. Asuga burned. Blackness came, and then others- ones-that-scavenged. Took Asuga. The masters came. When the masters left, took Asuga with them."

Zouge faltered slightly in wrapping a bandage around an arm. Asuga blinked again and glanced at him, cradled the echoing ache in the bond between them. His hands resumed their motions, slower, impossibly gentler.

The Hokage hummed, a deep look of something not-warm on his face. "How long ago was this? How old are you?"

A blink, a tilt of the head. Broken words less choppy now, beginning to smooth out. "Many seasons. More than Asuga has fingers. Have seen time of yellow-forest four times since. Asuga has seen yellow-forest five times, flower-grass four times."

"Would you like to go back to that place, where you were before?"

"Asuga goes where Zouge goes."

The Hokage shared an expression of rueful bemusement at that. "Is that so?" He considered her with old, sharp eyes. "Why? Why Zouge?"

"Asuga is weapon. Zouge is Asuga Master. Asuga goes where Master goes." She paused. Glanced at Zouge again, his fingers stiff on a loose bandage, though not quite faltering, still moving. "But Zouge says Asuga not weapon. Not- not really. Asuga not know how be not-a-weapon. So Asuga goes where Zouge goes, so Zouge can make her not-a-weapon. Because Zouge does not lie. Not to Asuga."

"Oh?" The amusement, dampened, was still clear and unrestrained in the word this time. "And how do you know that?"

"Zouge decided so, and so it is the way of things."

The Hokage laughed. Behind him, Enma was also grinning morosely, though held his amusement in, while a similarly humored light glimmered in the eyes of the Uzukage.

"Fair enough, I suppose. But you know, Zouge is a very busy man. What if he cannot take you with him?"

Zouge tensed, again, again, but still didn't stop winding the bandages around her torso.

"Asuga will wait. Asuga knows how to wait."

"And if you cannot be with Zouge? What will you do?"

"Whatever Zouge says."

"And if he does not say?"

She blinked again, slower, grimmer. They could see the way that the twin rings of her strange pupils contracted a fraction. When she spoke again, it was slowly, heavily, with all the weight of death behind it.

"Facility, was place should not exist again. Of all of facility, only Asuga and red-ones remain. Asuga never known want before. In facility, want worth nothing. Asuga knows cannot-want. Master said facility was wrongness. If cannot-want stay by Master, then Asuga should die." Flat, twin rings of purple and gold swiveled to Sandaza and the four others behind him. "Asuga and red-ones all should die. End to facility. Forever."

A full-body flinch jerked through Zouge, cut off halfway. He abandoned the strips of white fabric in his hands to circle both arms around Asuga's midriff and tuck her into his chest, heedless of the pull on his own injuries. Craning her head back, Asuga peered through the ragged tendrils of her hair at his face, startled but somehow not surprised. It was cast in shadow, and the corner of his mask had dropped to cover part of one eye, but she could see that the same blankness as before had slipped over his expression again and the line of his mouth was pressed tightly straight.

The others were surprised, too, she could tell. Had they thought she'd be afraid of death? A fair standard to assume by, but incorrect. For her, life had always been the treading of the line of death between reality and oblivion. She touched it every day. What was there to fear when she was always dying?

"And yet you do not ask for their death without your own?"

She sniffed, unconsciously reaffirming each scent detected to committed memory. "You, not want kill red-ones. Asuga carries most strong of the masters' seals. So long as are others can make seals, can use Asuga's seals, read-learn, counter red-ones' work. Red-ones weak. Could be used by others again. Asuga is strong, and bound to Zouge. Will not turn."

"And yet you subverted the control matrix," Sandaza broke in, accusing. Apparently indignance over her explanations had been enough for him to get over himself sufficiently to directly address her. "You undermine your beloved Zouge's control over you."

Not about to let slip the opportunity to return to staring down the man and his compatriots, Asuga promptly turned the full weight of her gaze back to him and, for the first time in over three years of association, spoke to the oldest red-one.

"No. Asuga bypasses pitfalls red-ones created in seals. If Asuga did not, red-ones' seals would have torn Zouge apart by now."

"By your own admission, too," Enma muttered from the side.

The commentary didn't quite garner a scowl this time. Sandaza was too unsteady from Asuga's direct address of him, not quite sure how to respond. He settled for denial.

"You don't know what you're messing around with. The system of seals you carry are interconnected, and they're all controlled by the control matrix, which can't be accessed without a master to activate it. You couldn't have done this before. You don't know what you're doing."

"Asuga does."

"You _don't_-!" Sandaza halted mid-step at the flare of warning from the Uzukage's signature. He clenched his fists and repeated, "You _don't_. You're just going to end up hurting your _master_ by playing with what you don't understand."

Asuga's expression was just as flatly blank as Zouge's, completely unprovoked. A slight twist of her chakra- and then suddenly intricate patterns of inked calligraphy were rising to the surface of her skin, bold black lines over mottled scars. A flare of light flashed as black turned to white in a pulsing wave through the ink as if it were veins. All around the room, curious eyes followed the white as it coalesced in a single point and began tremulously tracing its way through the ink.

A pause over a pattern of dots encircled by a half-arc.

"Volume moderator. Chakra."

A slashed-through word composed of smaller characters.

"Flux suppressor."

A compressed string reminiscent of barbed wire.

"Basic additional chakra vein. Interspersed pitfalls."

A stylized flame pulled in five directions like the points of a star on the forehead, encircled by flowing lines and bracketed by more, mirrored horizontally across to her temples like some mockery of a diadem.

Asuga tilted her head, and blinked, slow. "Memories."

She'd returned to the previous rhythmic enunciation of the broken-apart words, clearly reciting them more from memory than mental association between sounds and object.

Sandaza raised a quivering finger to point almost accusingly at her, if not for the sudden tremors wracking the arm. His eyes were wide, words mumbled and stuttering. "Im-impossible! The seals- The command matrix- Inaccessible- How-"

Asuga didn't really feel much like explaining to the red-ones exactly where they had gone wrong, considering they were likely capable of going through and altering things, but a brush of curiosity along the bond from Zouge had her elucidating a bit for his sake, words returning to their smoother flow once more, though remaining slow as she clearly struggled to put word to knowing.

"Seals on Asuga, seals not Asuga. Asuga's chakra, Asuga's body. Asuga retains direct access. Careful chakra manipulation can, just, not _use_ certain pathways. Or use some not affected. Plus, all paths connected. If stall five smalls in shoulder," a pulse of white through black ink, indicating position, "can change flow, redirect to amplify in legs." A trickling tendril of dimmer white to toes.

"I- That's-" He could not deny it was possible in theory. "But the control needed for that kind of thing- And bypassing the contract feedback loop, the failsafe, and all the other pitfalls at the same time- It might work in theory, but actually _doing_ it is impossible! You'd have to cut connection to the _Eighth_ _Gate_, not to mention three of the others and keeping your chakra flowing through your brain manually, all simultaneously! That kind of thing is not physically possible!"

Well, when he put it that way, it certainly sounded impossible, Asuga had to agree. However, he'd made things much more complicated for himself than necessary. She hadn't needed to do all that, though she'd still had to do some other questionably healthy things.

Not like she'd tell him that.

She did convey as much to Zouge, though.

Sadly, it seemed he felt obligated to share. He sent her a questioning feeling, and she assented after a beat, still instinctively bewildered by the idea of agency. Surprise and more denial went around at the revelation of what Sandaza called an empathic bond that apparently had been rendered obsolete and nulled after previous versions.

Staring at the red-one blankly, Asuge leaned slightly into the warmth of Zouge behind her and tilted her head to check his heartbeat while he shared.

Coincidentally, Zouge glanced down as the motion pressed her cheek into his chest, smothering half her face flat into his torso, combining with her limp locks and large eyes to effectively give her the look of a drenched… well. Small, vulnerable child in the process of deriving comfort from a familiar authority-figure.

Thinking of something, Zouge discreetly flicked his gaze up to gauge the atmosphere. Around the room, behind imposing bone-white ceramic masks and stoic facades, a good number of professional killers merely watched on. As they were professionals, no matter what they truly thought, they didn't so much as twitch outwardly.

At least, not unintentionally.

A twitch of a deliberately exposed finger beyond a sleeve, the slightest shifting of weight, tilting of a head-

His brothers-in-arms were uncomfortable with the story they saw in the child. They agreed with him- this one should not be left to the 'red-ones.' Would not be, if any of them had any say. And while that usually would not be the case, ANBU did not become such without the confidence of their leader.

Said leader was speaking again, and Asuga's full attention had returned to him.

"I see. Regardless, it seems Asuga has a high degree of chakra control. Impressive." He offered her another encouraging smile, one that Asuga blinked again at. Why did they all seem to think she needed encouragement? "A few more questions, if you don't mind?"

Zouge didn't, so Asuga didn't.

"How long had they been in operation?"

"Not sure. Since before Asuga."

"Were you one of the bijuu experiments?"

"Don't know this 'bijuu'. Probably."

"Yes, she was. Their greatest success, too," Sandaza reiterated. The Hokage gave him a brief distracted nod.

"Were there any other creatures stronger than you?"

"Not know any."

"Are there any other affiliated facilities?"

"Yes."

The Hokage's brows shot up. He considered her. "...but not in use any longer."

"No. Was destroyed."

"How?"

She tilted her head, lifting it from Zouge's chest fractionally. Blinked, slow and just as deep as the older man's own gaze. "Me."

He waited for her to elaborate. If there had been a time for her to do something like pout, like any normal child, he felt like it would have been then.

She didn't.

"Didn't know it would cave-in."

"You or the masters?"

"Both."

Enma barked a laugh. "Oh, I _like_ her."

The Hokage still looked curious.

"Can show."

He smiled at her. "That would be helpful, thank you. Now, one last question, and I'm afraid I have to ask. It's my responsibility as the leader of my people. You understand."

She did.

"You've already turned on your previous masters once. What's stopping you from doing it again?"

She was not offended. Of course, she didn't really know how to take offense, but this was different from what the red-ones were so fixated on.

"You not Asuga's previous masters. And you do not behave like them. Why do you fear Asuga will see you like them?"

Somewhere in the background, Sandaza grumbled, "That wasn't what he asked."

Asuga somehow gave the red-one a flat look without changing her expression even as she seemed to come to the conclusion that this was one of the things Zouge would want her to share. "...Master's orders are absolute. If Master orders Asuga to not bare claws against Leaf shinobi, even if Leaf shinobi kill Asuga, Asuga will not be able to do anything. But, if Leaf shinobi try mess with seals, anything safeguards built into seals are automatic. Not even Master can cause or stop those." Monotonous, a recitation of facts.

The red-one scowled at her, but mutinously said nothing.

The Hokage nodded to himself, turning her words over in his head. He glanced to one of the elites, the ANBU, watching. They stepped forward, bound blond hair glinting pale from the half-shadowed corner, and spoke, voice smooth and clinical. Two more appeared by their side.

"No lies, as far as she is aware of herself. Mental faculties sound, possessing significantly higher levels of intelligence for her age group than normal, though shows a concerning disregard for personal well-being and an emotional disconnect. I cannot speak in respect to her seals, but it should be relatively safe to enter her mind, though I would recommend her case be treated as a highly traumatized career ANBU's would."

On the first ANBU's right, an elite with dark brown hair stepped forward to report. "Seals are stable and mostly deal with manipulating her own existing network. Highly advanced work, a good deal beyond my ability to fully comprehend without more time. The memory seal is included among those."

The last of the three elites, one with lighter brown hair, stepped forward on the first's left. "She's severely injured. I imagine another examination now that she's in human form would give more accurate results, but from what I could tell her previous form also forcibly enhanced her musculateure despite obvious malnutrition and deprivation. The only things keeping her functioning was an absurdly enhanced healing factor and a frankly unhealthily large amount of circulating enhancement chakra. Beyond her general health, though, she should be fine for a mental examination. No severe damage to the head."

The Hokage nodded, and the three ANBU disappeared back into the shadows. Zouge tied off a last bandage, snapped the med kit shut, and gave her a light squeeze. "Whenever you're ready, Asuga."

She shifted in his arms, and he loosened his grip enough to allow her to turn and face him. Catching one of his hands with hers, she lifted it at him.

"Blood."

He obliged, nipping the skin on the thumb open with a chakra-sharpened canine and returning the hand to her hold.

Maneuvering the heavy limb- because Zouge _was_ an ANBU, and he might have been injured but that didn't mean the rest of his body wasn't extremely fit- she held his hand over her forehead as the blood welled into a thick droplet and dripped onto the center of the seal. Satisfied, she pressed Zouge's palm over the drop of blood, large hand dwarfing her head, and channelled chakra into the seal until it glowed. Zouge's chakra rose to meet hers.

Chakra pulsed out from them, roiling through the air.

Asuga closed her eyes.

* * *

The seal that the masters had ordered constructed to transfer memories had been a hack job, in truth. The seal work was excellent, of course, and could be credited with there being any functionality at all, though the science behind it was less than exceptional.

The mind is a highly complex organ, delicate in stability both physically and in the plane it allowed sentience to function on. Altogether, this meant that Asuga herself had a great degree of control over exactly what information was shared, if not the act of sharing itself. The memory seal had been constructed separately from the control matrix, so information could be conveyed to any with permission. It wasn't as if they could give her orders through it, anyways.

What she had previously told the Hokage and the others was not untrue. Her Master had the greatest control over the memory seal, and all senses could be shared. However, besides sight, which was the primary source of sensory perception for most humans, he did not control which _were_ shared- she did. Naturally, she would comply with Zouge's wishes.

In this case, Asuga did not have either need or want to withhold anything from her Master. However, her decision to unilaterally share everything without restraint came with an unanticipated side effect, one that she would not realize until after the fact, purely for the simple reason that it was something she'd never considered relevant to herself before.

* * *

Asuga saw darkness, and made it her own. In the darkness, she reached out, into a different darkness, the solid darkness of the material world, and sought light. First, the warm, warm, glow of her Master's presence. Then the heat of the Hokage, strong and strong-willed. The Uzukage, swirling, stable, steady. The muted, newly familiar flickers of the friends and the other guarding ANBU. And, most reluctantly, the red-ones, wavering and skittish, bitter and resenting. Latching on to them all, she pulled them into her darkness.

It would not do to leave herself and her Master exposed and vulnerable outside of her mind, after all. The ANBU standing guard just outside the room would have to do as protection. Besides, considering how the Hokage had consulted the three ANBU previously, she could safely assume their judgement was relevant and carried sway. It would be easier for them if they did not have to rely on secondhand accounts.

* * *

Once, Asuga's darkness might have been complete. She had long since come to understand her designated role as a tool, a weapon, method and means. She had no particular likes or dislikes, only knowledge of what would be better to do and what would be better to avoid. Pain was an inescapable constant, so she held no particularly strong aversion to that, either. She did not love or hate. Not the masters, not even the red-ones, really. Impatience and patience was all the same. Social interaction was limited to receiving orders and defending her allocated portions of sustenance from others. There was no such thing as clothes, let alone fashion, thus, and there was no such thing as choice, let alone preference. And really, what need had she for cosmetic embellishments to merely another piece of her that the masters had carved out to suit their purposes? Occasionally, she saw daylight and plants and earth under sunlight and not torchlight, but she lived in the darkness- she was its creature. Such was the way of things, and there was neither acceptance nor denial of that fact. Fact did not need either to be fact.

And then her Master had come. Zouge. Light in darkness, star-touched and impossible and all things she did not really understand.

Her darkness, rare as she had visited it, had always been full and empty, complete and void. And yet, for some reason, this time it was not. It had changed.

There were stars.

Perhaps that was an inaccurate description.

There were stars, and then there was a Star.

Across the expanse of nightlike sky, a hurricane of stardust and moondust and brilliant, muted, twinkling pins of lights had scattered itself in a frozen image of untouchable light. No end to the vastness could still be perceived, but now there was a horizon for it to disappear to in pursuit of it, marked only by the sharp invisible line the sea of stars above faded at. High overhead, the silver-blue-white light of a single radiant Star shone down on all else of the void, watching, knowing.

And yet, at the same time, all this was not so. She could sense the light, the vast expanse and the concentrated point, and yet, it could not be seen. It was as if it was veiled. Behind what, she had no idea, but the conclusion was as natural as breathing and fit in her understanding of her changed darkness like a shard in a greater undefinable object. Blackness shrouded what light could be seen from a few brighter pinpricks, as if it were a tangible thing. The Star smouldered heatlessly down when its effulgence should have been clear and all-reaching.

Asuga did not understand any of this, but then she supposed she would, in time. She understood that, at least.

It occurred to her that that might have been exactly the point.

Curious.

Allowing such thoughts to pass from her mind, Asuga observed as new, not-her presences appeared within her self, her darkness, floating in the void. It was as strange as ever to have other minds contained within her own, but stranger for the fact that she had been the one to willingly invite them in for once. They were not invaders, but… others.

They took stock of her surroundings, the pale-blond ANBU in particular seeming to look and process and comprehend and file away thoughts for further contemplation. They seemed strangely familiar, no, knowledgeable, about what they were looking at. A specialist, then.

"Asuga?" Zouge called, head swivelling, eyes scanning. The others mimicked his actions.

Asuga stirred and reached for him, and the darkness stirred, reaching, too.

It was like chakra sense, really. Seeing without seeing. Just knowing. Obviously she had no eyes, per se, within her own subconscious. The others didn't, either, but they were present as manifestations of their selves. Their solid, individual forms were a reflection of that. And they were within her mind- within her self and her self was darkness and so they were left floating in a void where abyss met stars.

She was the void and the abyss and the stars and the darkness.

Curling a greater concentration of her self around Zouge, she settled around him like a familiar cloak of night, like when she had leant over his shivering, sickened form in the perpetual night of the facility. Tendrils of somehow luminous ebony circled ethereally around him, soft, quiet. He smiled, and lifted a hand to let the tendrils stream through his fingers.

"It's beautiful here, Asuga. Where are we?"

Minds think in terms of languages. Asuga, though, had never learned to speak. She understood speech perfectly fine, of course, but, seemingly as a side effect of not using the language herself, her mind had never quite developed the habit of 'talking' that thoughts usually took shape of. Instead, she thought in the most basic forms- ideas. Impressions of them, rather than molded words, were what was communicated by her mind. Retrospectively, this fact had probably only contributed to the belief that she was a sub-sentient beast.

-_minds and mirrors and a thousand million things Asuga doesn't know, there and not there and here and not here, black emptiness, Asuga and not Asuga and everything in and not in between_-

"It's her mindscape," the blond ANBU answered for them after a brief stalled moment where the visitors had been hit by the onslaught of unfiltered _thoughts_. "We are inside her mind already. Normally, people maintain a sense of the mind as either an organ or separate space connected metaphysically somehow to their physical bodies, so usually mindscapes take the form of some sort of bounded space cut off from the rest of the world, or else some incarnation of the brain. Theoretically, though, due to the malleable nature of the mind and the fact that there are no actual rules that say the mindscape has to look like one thing or another, it is possible for a space like this to exist as well. I've never seen anything quite like this, though. I've never _heard_ of anything quite like this."

"That can't be right," Sandaza muttered, head tilted back to squint at the muted sky. Behind him, the other red-ones were looking around in a mixture of trepidation and confusion, as if they had been expecting a more hostile environment. Not something that was so harmlessly distant and undeniably _pretty_. "We've used the memory seal before during the test phases. It was always an empty black void before."

"The mind is susceptible to change, especially after large changes in life, or other significant or exceptional events." The blond ANBU turned their masked face towards Sandaza and tilted it consideringly. "Though I have never heard of such a thing as a completely empty mindscape, either."

"You are suggesting she was shielding herself?" the Hokage questioned, intrigued. "From a seal carved into her own skin?"

"Possible. No less unheard of as the rest."

"No, we were able to access her memories without incident," Sandaza refuted, repressing his agitation.

"A mystery for another time, then." The Hokage lifted a hand of his own, curious and probingly searching. Asuga sent a few tendrils of glowing darkness to swirl around it obligingly. "Zouge, I do believe Asuga said you would have the most control here?"

"It does seem that way." Zouge touched the bond between them, unsure how exactly to proceed, though he could feel the way the darkness curled around him flowed around and with him at the same time, bending to the slightest push of his will, though there were some shreds where he touched and felt a vague resistance, like the drag of water on clothed limbs. There was no doubt in his mind what the cause of that was. "I think what she meant, though, was that out of all _other_ people, I have the greatest degree of control. She's… _guiding_ me, I think. This is her mind, her domain. I'm pretty sure that means she's the one really in charge, here."

Sandaza was scowling something fierce again, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like it included the words 'told' and 'compromised' and 'seals'. Behind him, the other red-ones were shifting uneasily, a strange sort of _aura_ or something of fear beginning to emanate outwards from them, not visible and yet tangibly _there_ in a way that simply could not have been, in the physical world.

"Sandaza," the Uzukage addressed the man. "If you've tested the seal before, you know of its general functions, yes? Advice for Zouge-san?"

The red-one let out a low hummed grumble of blunted discontent. "We've been referring to the seal as a memory seal, but it's a bit more complicated than that. There are distinct types of memory, which can loosely be classified under short-term and long-term, though short-term memory is technically its own thing as well. Sensory, working, and short-term memory are all temporary stores of information, and essentially useless for the facility's purposes. Long-term memory, which includes episodic, semantic, and procedural, was of more interest, though procedural was focused on in other areas. We can't access sensory, working, short-term, or procedural memory using this seal, but we can access episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory is your personal history, while semantic memory is your mental archive of facts.

"The seal essentially allows you to access whatever information might be there by using another linked piece of information. You could think of it as a sort of Q&A process. For example, the easiest way to call up an episodic memory would be to give a date. For semantic memory, a sort of keyword would be about the equivalent."

The Hokage was rubbing his chin again. "And how is the information passed? Do we view it here, relive the memory with her? Or perhaps it is directly passed into our own minds?"

"A complicated question. In short, both and neither. We're not completely sure about every aspect. It varies a bit depending on what the information is and how she came across it. For the most part, though, episodic memories fairly consistently simply replay themselves in her own mind. They do take longer, though, since they are experiences, not simple facts."

"I see… Then, shall we start with something on the simpler side? Perhaps… hmm… The last time you ate?"

The Hokage looked to Zouge, and Zouge looked to the-darkness-that-was-Asuga, and Asuga thought back a moment. The darkness rippled and flowed, and tendrils of glowing dark swirled as the _knowing_ tumbled from her mind to theirs automatically the instant she came up with the answer.

-_three days, needle liquid now_-

"The path you took to reach Konoha?"

The darkness rippled and flowed again, but this time it took on form and color until a patchy sort of map-thing was floating before the group, darkness wisping from the edges. It reminded Zouge of islands stranded in a restless sea. A closer look revealed a few familiar outlines.

"The Elemental Nations," Sandaza grunted. He stepped forward to point out the jutting line of significantly more detailed landscape running southwards. The blurs of greens and browns even sketched out into individual trees in some places. "She's never been further south than the facility before now, so there's nothing there she can show you." He gestured towards the swirling clumps of black beyond the muted areas of colors.

"And that?"

Sandaza furrowed his brow as he turned toward a stray cluster of muted colors. "That's… It doesn't seem to be anchored relative to anything else… Perhaps, a stray location in her memory? No one had ever really bothered teaching the creatures geography, for obvious reasons…"

"Uzushiogakure."

Startled, all eyes went to one of the red-ones. It was the boy, surprisingly enough. Instinctively hunching defensively under the sudden scrutiny, the boy visibly mustered up his courage again. The words, for all their hesitancy, were clear in the void.

"Th-that building. The street across from Marioko-san's wife's sweets shop." He pointed, and swallowed audibly. "It's Uzushiogakure."

Unseen glances were exchanged. Nobody said anything further about the unanchored mass as attention was tactfully returned to the clearer portions of the map.

The Hokage eyed the almost ridiculously detailed elaborations in sharp interest. He made a few quick mental measurements and estimates; disregarding the large sections missing, it was accurate, and proportional in relations between locations.

"The facility," he tried, giving the surrounding darkness a questioning glance.

"You'll have to be more specific than that," Sandaza advised. "What about it? The location? The layout? The things that went on there?"

"The location. The place itself."

The map dissolved in a wave of swirling darkness, boiling for a moment before reconstructing itself. It was a single solid piece this time, and more magnified, though a few dark and muddied patches pockmarked it. Throughout the thick growth covering the landscape, what had to be utterly massive skeletons skimmed up through the spaces between the treetops like breaching whales. At the same time, another conglomeration of darkness gathered in a swirling mass to one side, quickly taking on sharp edges and precise lines and filtering excess black tendrils away until it was clearly visible.

Sandaza choked on the airless air of the void.

He reached out a trembling hand, not quite touching it.

He traced the outline of it through the air.

"All this time… But of _course_… And we- we never thought to-" He broke off with a bitter bark of laughter. "All that time, slaving away for those people, our only company mindless beasts, and we never even _considered_ checking any of their degraded minds for a blueprint of the place!"

And indeed it was that- three-dimensional and precisely outlined down to the last ventilation shaft.

Sandaza slapped a hand to his forehead and dragged it down over one eye, bowing his head to cradle it with a nigh-hysterical _giggle_. The woman red-one, Kabeko, tentatively reached forward from behind him to clasp a steadying hand on his trembling shoulder. All the red-ones' faces bore surpassingly ugly expressions.

The Hokage stepped up to the blueprint, too, and watched in fascination as the lines of the facility let his hand through like it was but morning mist. "How is it that you know this?"

-_earthen tones of blackness and moisture, claws piercing packed earth to strike ancient white bone, the ache of grit biting into rubbed-raw flesh beneath rough-hewn harnesses, meals of tough roots and tender grubworm pulp, plodding straining exertion until muscles pulled loose from bones and emaciated bodies fell and rose no more, the sputtering sparks of the first of a great many guttering torches to come_-

"The other facility… came before this one…" the Hokage muttered. Asuga could _see_ the connections being made by each individual present. Truly, her Master was not the only intelligent one. It seemed to be a common theme, outside of the facility, outside of the mindless throngs of selfish bottom-feeders and mindless creatures. "The facility you broke out of five days ago…" The Hokage's eyes drifted to her. "You helped build it."

All the creatures at the time had. The masters had helped in some places themselves, but it would not have been enough. What other labor would they have used?

Withdrawing his hand, the Hokage stepped back towards the group, a deeply thoughtful look on his face.

Sandaza gave another hysterical little giggle. "It's all- all so clear now! The- the _irony_\- These past three years, all of it, it's all just a _big_, _fat_ joke! Just irony incarnate! Captured for our minds and skill in our craft, yet the senseless beasts we used as chattel sat right under our noses, knowing everything we would have needed to get out! Mindless chattel with the path to escape all laid out, but all rational ability to use it taken from them! Beasts strong enough to tear us limb from limb, subjugated and defanged! Those _masters_\- they had to rely on us for brains and the creatures for brawns, they had nothing themselves, nothing but a collar and leash and one or two higher than average combat skills and inferior numbers- And the one beast stable enough to aid us in our escape was placed right in front of us as the bane of our existence!

"Did you even kill Kono?" Sandaza dropped his hands from his face and wheeled on the swirling darkness, wide eyes peering into the void with a wild glint in them. He turned on the spot, seeking some form of representation of the divine beast's presence to fixate on. Finding none, he shouted into the darkness instead. "You didn't, did you? They just told you to tear his corpse apart and give the pieces to us, didn't they?" His voice dropped sharply as he began muttering to himself instead. "They conditioned the creatures to avoid eating shinobi bodies in case of precautionary measures, like poison, or self-immolation. Those people- they never did anything but use us, manipulate us; they lied to us at every turn, about little things, about big things- What would have stopped them from lying about _how_ they killed one of us?"

Staggering, as if the mental manifestation of himself could have suffered from something so physically petty and mortal as hyperventilation, Sandaza's face crumpled into an expression of such fatigue that one might have believed he would pass on the next moment from sheer exhaustion from life. The remaining red-ones scurried up to his side, reaching out hesitant hands to steady him. He was no longer shouting. He was talking to her again.

"I- we're not stupid, or blinded by selfishness, however it might seem to you. Maybe we were at times, but- We know you and all the other creatures got the much worse deal. You were supposed to be free from it all though, free in your ignorance, your regression into savagery. And it had the quicker end. But you- The oldest of the projects- You didn't- Somehow, impossibly enough, you kept your mind. And you- You couldn't leave even knowing perfectly well _how_ to leave."

The oldest red-one lapsed into a weary silence, every one of his years and more dragging at the creases in his face.

So there _was_ a limit to the level of self-denial physically possible. Or at least, there was in this case.

They waited for him.

"I'm… sorry." He reached limp hands up to rub at his face tiredly, and half-heartedly added, "I'm not apologizing, not in the- not the way you might want me to, but- This whole thing is just such a mess. I'm sorry you got caught up in this, I'm sorry that my people got caught up in this, I'm sorry that all those others got caught up in this and died mindless savages after tearing each others' throats out with their bare hands and teeth and- It's not- I- We were just trying to survive." He stated it as a fact and not a plead for something like pity. "We all were. You, us. You understand that, I know. They said that you were semi-sentient, that when you reacted slowly to orders it was because you were trying to think and failing instead of just reacting to conditioned commands automatically, but that wasn't it at all, was it? You- you were trying to understand. To resist. The reasons, the why's… But the command collar, and the secondary command positions in your command matrix- And the training- So you did what they told you to. I read your file. So many times, I- Can't believe, should've- You wouldn't have known any different. You'd never known any different. I knew that, have known it, but it was just so easy to-" He sighed, a great heaving thing. "This whole thing is just such a mess."

Surprisingly, there wasn't much Asuga found disagreeable in all that he'd spilled.

She still didn't much care. It was irrelevant. They were irrelevant.

He smiled at her, she knew, though his eyes did not seek hers, and it was ugly and unhappy. "I'm sorry that they found you. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have succeeded in as much as they had."

They all let the older man have a moment, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, struggling with himself. A long minute later, he let out another explosive breath and pushed both hands up and into his hair, running them through it, pushing it backwards and out of the way as he forcibly straightened from his standing slump, clearly packaging the sudden influx of frustration and comprehension away for later. He looked at his Uzukage. Nodded. The Uzukage nodded back, and looked at the Hokage. Behind him, Enma was watching the proceedings with face stoic and eyebrows hidden in his hairline.

"Since it seems you've reached an understanding and we've all got an idea of what to expect now, shall we begin?" The Hokage took back control of the situation, sweeping the loaded topic aside for professionalism before it had a chance to turn volatile again. "Asuga? We don't need to see the entirety of your life, just whatever you feel comfortable sharing. We'll trust you to decide which events are relevant or important. You can start whenever you're ready."

-_start_… _(black and blood and scorching cold and freezing heat and pain pain pain) where to start?_-

"All stories have a beginning," Zouge murmured into the swirling black. "Try there?"

She did.

* * *

_Darkness- night- night-turned-day? _

_ Cold and hot and white and black and red and all the shades in between. _

_ Crisp frozen air, acrid ash. _

_ The sky was crying slowly. _

They were standing in the middle of a field of snow, no, a forest, no, a village.

A burning village.

Zouge shared a glance with the others. The kage were examining their blurred surroundings with curious airs, while their respective subordinates had formed up around them before doing the same, automatically adopting placements that were neutral but could easily shift either defensively or offensively at a moment's notice. All their bodies were clearly defined, but each held a faded, transparent sort of quality. Where they stepped, they did not sink. The snow remained undisturbed. They were spectators in an untouchable past.

_Blue-silver on the ground, murky brown-black all around. _

_ Moonlight. _

_ Firelight. _

_ Silence. _

_ Screaming. _

He shivered, and paused when the others did the same simultaneously. It was hardly cold enough for the knee-jerk reaction to override his, or any of their, conscious control over their bodies. Something like that could make or break the kinds of missions ANBU were sent on. They had extensive training in managing their fine motor functions.

"It's hers," Sandaza grunted, explaining to the array of puzzled shifting. "What Asuga feels. She's really going all out for you guys. All five senses- no chakra sense, but then maybe she's a bit young for that at this point." He trudged forward, feet passing right through the little crests in the carpet of wind-swept snow instead of breaking and scattering the tips in shallow showers of white ice. They followed.

"The murky areas are not directly part of the memory we are currently in. They're the impressions of the surroundings recalled from familiarity with an area. If you go up closer to, say, a tree, you might get an impression of bark or a knot or two, maybe more, if she remembers it. The things that are sharp even from a distance, though, are the actual memory- the points where time and space tie together in her mind."

_Black figures, black shadows, smears in the night, scrawny and brawny and ragged and hungering. _

Sandaza pointed out the vaguely human-shaped blobs running past, heading in the same direction as them. Their details were moving, morphing things, sometimes there, sometimes obscured. Where they stepped, no shadows were cast. "Some things, like those people, are extrapolated from what she knows for certain. If this is her first memory, the time from before the facility that she mentioned, then it has to have been from over four years ago, at least. Given that her approximate age is a bit short of six years, she can't be much more than a year or two old at this point. She couldn't have actually seen them and then moved fast enough to arrive before them to be wherever they're headed to run into her. She _is_ smart enough to figure out where they must have been in the meantime when remembering, though."

_Pain, pain, searing pain, searing like fire, searing like ice. _

_ Pressure. _

Zouge and the other ANBU twitched at the influx of sensory information telling them that the whole of his left side was literally on fire and in the process of being crushed to a pulp and jerked around to stare in the direction that something just _told_ him Asuga was. Sandaza and the other red-ones made faces and gasped out moans of pain, bodies reflexively curling protectively around wounds that were not there. The Uzukage briefly flickered through an unattractive face of his own at the sensation, while the Hokage and Enma turned stony-faced and unreadable. Brushing past Sandaza, Zouge made a beeline for where the orange-red glow of flames was brightest. It wasn't far.

_Red heat, creaking timbers, who, where, She? _

Overriding the urge to flinch again, Zouge burst into the small open space around the front of a burning stone cottage. The surroundings were just as blurred as the previous ones, but as the others filtered into the open space they warped and twisted as if trying to give something to identify-

-and then suddenly they were in the memory.

_ A face, tense and grim, twin orbs of deep purple, calling, reaching hands, reaching, reaching, reaching back- _

_ Roaring rising flame, hands jerking back, creaking snapping crumbling- _

_ Stabbing pain, burning pain, crushing pain, hot red, wet red, red, red, red, black. _

It was a strange, almost disorienting experience. The village they'd been traversing was still there, as were their incorporeal forms, but simultaneously they were experiencing something… _else_. It was like thinking while walking, in a way. The mental image was no less there than the visuals being taken in by the eyes.

Sudden understanding came to each of them then, that certain _knowing_ that was just there. The previous flashes of impressions of the senses were as much memories as the new visions they were experiencing. It just hadn't seemed so at first because humans were accustomed to a single field of vision, as opposed to say chameleons with their monocular vision.

"Oh," Sandaza murmured from somewhere behind Zouge, and yes, _oh_. Because what Sandaza had said previously was slightly off. It wasn't just singular things like the shadowy forms from before that were extrapolated, it was the entire scene. After all, humans were not panoptic, not even the Hyuuga, and not in this manner of sight without a fixed point of view. They saw through their eyes, from a placed perspective. Somehow, the seals affecting Asuga's mental processes gave her a unique perspective of the world and her memories, and caused a sort of… split. What they were witnessing now were, on the one hand, her pure, unadulterated memories, and on the other, what amounted to a strategic reconstruction of the larger area.

That was a chunin-level mental skill in its most basic stages. The complexity to which Asuga was doing it was surpassing what most low-jounin were capable of- and she was sharing it through her mind, no less.

She must have thought about this particular memory a lot.

_Clattering of little rocks, crunching of cold-white. A flash of orange heat on black, then gone. _

_It hurt, hurt, pain hurt, dark, where? _

They watched as a civilian woman hesitantly picked her way through the fringes of the collapsed, burning house, a bundle of something black-tuffed, snuffling and whimpering, held against her chest, moving this way and that, craning her neck, attempting to either get a view of something through the crumbled stone and fallen timbers or check for incoming threats. It was hard to tell which. Perhaps both. Perhaps not.

From the opposite side of the open space to the group, a man stumbled out of an alleyway, shouting something-

_Yelling, shouting, voices, far, close, closer, who? Where She? _

-muffled and incomprehensible. He gesticulated widely at the house, fire-glow catching on a seeping gash down one temple, hollering unhearable words over the roar of flames and what was undoubtedly the background sounds of violence and sacking and pillaging. The woman called something back, a tinge of uncertain hesitation mingling with self-preserving fear in her expression.

_Creaking, groaning, snapping, pressure, _pain_. _

Another drawn-out death-knell from the wreckage alight with orange-red preceded another half-collapsing tumble of broken house and debris.

_Dark but warm, warm, too warm, hot. _

_Blackness burning orange light. _

The flames leapt for the fresh tinder.

The woman paused, stared into the centermost of the rubble.

_Deep purple, wide, holding. _

_She. _

_Reaching back, but no reaching hands to reach for. _

_Far. _

_Too far. _

Zouge didn't know what had taken him so long, but his brain finally made the connection.

Asuga was in the house.

_Yelling, shouting, voices, far, close, closer. Many. _

Whooping, hollering shouts, viscous and excited, rose up from an alleyway beyond a row of houses, nearing by the moment. Screaming lead it, wild and erratic and terrified and desperate. The man shouted again, and the woman no longer hesitated.

_Purple, black. Gone. What? Where? Why? _

_Don't leave… _

Clutching the bundle tight to her, the woman turned and fled, following the man, disappearing as a smudge into the murk without so much as a backward glance, expression afraid and without a trace of regret or worry for anything except what lay before herself.

Mere moments after the pair disappeared from sight, a trio of frantic young women rushed through the open space without pause, a pack of jeering, excited men reeking of blood and alcohol and ill-tanned animal hide close on their heels. Four long seconds of raucous voices, and then the shades of another night-wreathed alley was swallowing them, too.

The last precariously standing chunks of broken house shuddered, then, and finally caved. Cascades of dust, dirt, rubble, and snow tumbled down in a blurred plume of swirling orange-lit dust.

Somewhere sideways and slanted away in the backs of their minds, the _black_ and _fire_ and _red_ and _pain_ suddenly _wasn't_. Around them, the leaping tongues of hungry heat slowed in their dance until they seeped like cold tree sap, the color leeching until all was black and grey and tainted bone.

A pulse of something relievingly fami(Asuga)liar-

-and then the swirling darkness rose up like backwards rain to sweep away all that was not.

* * *

For a brief moment, Zouge struggled against the darkness, controlled panic.

Asuga had been in the house.

Asuga was still in the house.

(_"Asuga burned," she'd said. She'd said so.) _

Asuga's mother had left her to burn.

Asuga's mother had left her to _die_.

Asuga's mother had known she was still alive, and _had still left her to die_.

And then he registered that it was not just darkness that he was pushing back against, but the-darkness-that-was-Asuga (somewhat distracted-feeling, but he couldn't blame her), and she was here and not left behind under the rubble of what should have been her home.

(_Fire and precarious debris and they _had to go back-)

He ran his fingers through the wispy ebony and just, breathed.

He still hadn't quite managed to recenter himself when the world did that ripple-thing again, and then color was leeching back into their sudden surroundings. They were different, this time- shifting, flashes, patches of past reality like islands in a sea of ink.

_A flash of the collapsed house, burned-out and charcoaled. Ash on her tongue, in her lungs. Pain. _

The open area in the ransacked town, now burned-out and shaded in monotone with soot and ash.

_Time was passing. The sky cried as it changed_.

The open space had shrunken to just a small circle now, no scent or sound or feeling. Just blurs.

The sky brightened and darkened, only tinting out of gradients of grey to mark the movement of a much more distant celestial firelight.

Night to day to night to day to night.

Asuga was fading.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

_A flash of a cold, bitter expression on a cold, bitter, dirty face. Shrewd, calculating eyes. Grasping, pulling talons, no, fingers. Grimy, shriveled things, tinted in stagnated blood. Sacks of twisted metal objects and sooty cloth pieces._

The circle of the past reality expanded slightly, though little was defined. A number of moving figures slunk through the fuzzy landscape, three or four in total, themselves half-incorporeal and trailing thick clouds of muddled earthen tones. One was crouched among the ruins of the collapsed house, shuffling through the mess, clearly scavenging anything salvageable. The crouched figure, a gnarled middle-aged woman, paused a moment, and they saw what she saw- a small, mangled arm.

Zouge cringed internally at the none-too-gentle way that the woman pried at the limb, and then pulled at it to the form connected to it. They all saw the way the woman paused a moment later as a small, burned and bloodied torso emerged from the rubble. She pressed a thumb to the tiny wrist.

Asuga was still alive, but only barely. Her chances weren't good by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever the woman saw, though, seemed to be good enough to fold bony limbs in and stuff the dying toddler into one of her sacks.

It was no act of mercy. Zouge tried not to think of what use these kinds of rural civilians might have for dying children or dead bodies. These were clearly members of the lowest levels of society in a very rural area so it was unlikely they had the connections to be marketing corpse brides, and Asuga wasn't dead yet, so they weren't cannibals. Probably.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

_Moving trees, grey skies, white. The sky had stopped crying. The air hurt to breathe._

The scavengers were trudging through a forest of muddled greys and black-greens and browns. There were more of them, if the additional handful of blobby forms moving in the same direction were indeed people. One might have been a dog. The few clear enough to make out as recognizably human were covered in haphazard layers of stinking rags and furs, and each held the thongs of roughshod sleds wrapped around dirt-crusted fingers, dragging the heaps of their loot behind them.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

_Another house, small, unassuming, dirty. Ramshackle and looking as like to crumble to dust as the first._

The procession of opportunists broke up as they came to a cluster of huts, not bothering to say anything to each other as they scattered with their spoils. The gnarled woman who had taken Asuga stopped at a wretched construct about halfway to the village center.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

_Cold. Tired. Hungry. _

_She worked. _

_Her fingers were bleeding. _

_They were staining the clothes pink. _

_The dirt-faced-one hit her. Yelled. _

"_Again," she said. _

_Again, she had. _

Asuga scrubbed feebly at the tubful of patched clothes and rags, small, weak fingers stiff and bright red from more than just the chilled water despite the bucketful of boiling water that had been dumped in just minutes before to keep the tub from freezing. An obviously too-thin heap of rags draped her own gaunt body over the plaster of rust-stained bindings.

On the other side of the frozen path, another stick-thin child with a knotted nest of hair was scooping chunks of snow into a tub of his own. He was older by a number of years. A man came out of the neighboring hut, throwing a heavy hand carelessly out in passing to thump the boy in the chest and growl an order. The boy, sent tumbling, picked himself up on raw-scraped palms and set back to work. Zouge couldn't tell if he was shivering from fright or the layer of white now seeping into his rags.

Asuga scrubbed numbly for what must have been hours. When she finally poured out the tub, the water that sluiced out was too grimy to see any tint of red.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

_Voices. Grumbled, sneered, calm, loud, quiet. More than one. Unfamiliar. _

_The gnarled woman was speaking the market-speech, but she was not in the market. _

Asuga was outside the hut, seated on a boulder a few feet away from the gnarled woman. The gnarled woman was speaking with a group of three men that were clearly not villagers. Each wore a hooded cloak, thick pants and well-made leather boots peeking out at the bottom, and gestured with gloves. The man in the lead said something, and the gnarled woman scoffed, turning her nose up and countering with something biting about her dead husband.

Asuga was peering at her hands, turning them this way and that. They were dotted with split blisters and were raw and cracked along the crease lines, and wept yellowing pus. Further down, thick, fractured scabs scrawled over her wrists and under the flimsy cover of her rags.

She flexed her fingers and was rewarded with a pulse of both pain and warmth. She clenched and flexed again, heedless of the pain but hopeful it might drive off the inescapable cold.

_Heat, bad heat, but good. Pain, meaningless._

A bolt of something cold and dreadful fell down Zouge's spine and curled deep in his gut as the thought trickled through to his knowledge. In that instant, he knew. This was the true start. But no- He fisted his hands. These were memories. He could do nothing but watch.

The peeling edge of skin along the deepest split across her palm caught the weak sunlight and glowed red as the light managed to seep partway through it. Asuga poked at it experimentally, bending it back in place and watching as it pulled away to allow the wound to gape open again.

_Muttering, satisfied. Passing of things, clinking, metal. Looming shade, imbalance, movement. The world spun._

With a last gruff exchange, the tallest of the three men passed over a small pouch that tinkled of money. The speaker of the three jerked his head in Asuga's direction, and the shortest moved to loom over her. With an almost careless swipe of his arm, he scooped the tiny child up by the scruff of her rags and deposited her on his shoulder like a small sack of grain. As one, the men turned and left without another word.

In the distance, the setting sun was flooding the barren fields' undisturbed blankets of white with deep scarlet, weak heat on a stagnant puddle.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

(The pain never faded.)

* * *

Notes:

As they progress further and further into Asuga's memories, it becomes increasingly difficult for both Asuga and them to keep viewing the experiences separate from themselves, partially from the depth of the submergence in her psyche and partially from the fullness of the extent to which Asuga shares herself in her subconscious efforts to _will_ them to believe her and thus allow her to remain by Sakumo's side. Since she's never really had any choice in anything before, nor anything to actually _want_ in the first place, the depth of her investment in her goals are to unusual extremes along the lines of _I-would-risk-my-life-to-accomplish-this-or-die-trying_. It's all or nothing for her. Also, we've gotta keep in mind that this is the first time she's attempting to share her memories herself, as an active participant instead of a passive one, and it's only natural she's encountering issues in moderating it, especially since they're her own personal past experiences.

Just to check in with y'all, though, quick question, one that I just realized was a legit possible issue the other day when talking with one of my regular reviewers: you guys know Asuga is human, right? Like, base organic origin. Was born as a homo sapiens. She's just got some wacked up chakra stuff going on that needs to eventually get sorted out. I promise it'll make sense, eventually! I know I've made the line quite blurry there, deliberately in fact, but I hadn't realized it might be a problem until now. I wanted to emphasize Asuga as an entity of existence first and foremost, because then we go back to the issue of ninjas-as-weapons and such, and her mental state, and urgh, even I'm starting to make my own head hurt just writing this.

Alas. Because:

This is a heads up, guys. Next chapter is going to be, like, _literally_ trippy, in both the literal sense and the sense of the _word_ literal. It's been one of the main reasons why the update rate has been so terrible; every time even I looked at the mess I was writing my brain just noped the heck out. It- it gets better as she gets older in her memories! Well. Kinda. *sweats*

Anyways! Regardless of all that! Thank you so much, for those of you who do, for taking the time to review! All the reviews I get, no matter how short or what it is you have to say, always make my day! Please please please review if you can, even a quick two-symbol emoji is greatly appreciated, and I do respond to any and all reviews, potentially with a returned two-symbol emoji! (Yes, this has happened! It's great!)

I haven't gotten any responses on what length of chapter you guys prefer, my beloved readers, and it's not too late to answer! Review or PM, either way is fine! But since I've gotten no responses thus far, I'm going to go ahead and keep going with the lengths I have now, at the same release rate of 1-2 months per chapter. Hope you guys don't mind that, haha… *sweats*

(Also, another quick question for y'all: would you prefer if I responded to you guys at the ends of chapters? I know FF's review system is a bit hard to get around, what with being redirected as a PM and all.)


	7. Chapter 7

Hey guys! Hope you've all been doing well enough! Always take care of yourselves and stay safe!

First and foremost, you've got my apologies for taking an extra half a month to finish up this chapter. It's a real mess this time, not gonna lie. Some bits will get rather confusing, so I'm going to be adding here at the end a sort of briefly summarized explanation of what happens in some scenes.

In regards to housekeeping, I'm sad to notify you all that I've officially run out of any and all pre-written material, as in I literally finished this chapter half an hour ago and promptly put it into to clean up the reformatting and immediately post, so there is even less of a non-existent buffer than before. Thus, the lack of guarantee in the update rate will continue for the foreseeable future. Sorry guys! That said, still not in danger of being discontinued. No worries there!

On another note, fun fact: this chapter is technically just under 10k words, not counting the notes and such added. Normally, 10k words is about 20 pages of a Google Doc. However, due to ignoring grammatical conventions and playing with my formatting to hell and back, this chapter ended up at 24 pages, 26 with the notes!

Additionally, I have decided that I'm not going to be going through the hassle of copy-pasting every review I get and re-responding to them at the end of chapters, because you all can read them yourselves with the extra click of a mouse and I don't want to turn you all off from reading these notes and missing the more important info. I do, however, want to recognize all you lovely people out there who take the time and spare the effort to write a review and brighten my day! This will normally go at the end of chapter, but because this is the first time, and we're recognizing more than just those who supported since the last chapter, it's going up top here this time! So here goes!

Much thanks to nice2michu, AlucardTheDragonicGod, Copycat25, firemaster101, Carlee, eunoiapaint, Obsessed whoops, TintedFero, and Warkless! And! Also! To those who reviewed in updates previous to the last chapter! Much thanks to nice2michu, Copycat25, orlha, homelybiscuit, AquilaPallas129, americacorona830, mallarieTwinkies, firemaster101, Fanreader1991, and AnimeFreak71777 for all their consistent support! I love you all! (I am aware that there is one more reviewer from just the other day, but isn't showing me them or their review, so I unfortunately cannot include them here today. Sorry! Next time!)

Now then, that's all I can think to add here off the top of my head, so we can get on to the story! As always, I love you all, you guys are the best, and I shall now shamelessly make my plea for reader attention! Read, review, fave, enjoy!

* * *

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death.

* * *

Sarutobi Hiruzen was a pragmatist. He had come to power during the first of what would come to be a new breed of war. He had ordered others to be killed for the sake of his own people. He had ordered his own people to die for the sake of others.

Sarutobi Hiruzen knew sacrifice. He knew betrayal. He knew loss, suffering, desperation, despair.

Watching one of his most capable ANBU captains do the equivalent of fuss like a newly whelped mother wolf (and there was more than one reason for that, he supposed) over what could have passed as just another war orphan, given a few rags and a couple dozen layers more grime and less blood, Sarutobi Hiruzen had recognized the inhumanity of what had happened to the far-too-tiny child and acknowledged it. The child had suffered. She should, and would, be handled with consideration, now that the lack of immediate urgency had been confirmed and he had a few assurances that she held no malignant intentions towards his people. She would be permitted to assimilate into the village, and receive what resources they could spare on wartime footing to rehabilitate her from her trauma, if Uzugakure and the Uzukage were willing to let her settle in Konohagakure rather than take her back with them on account of village and clan sealing secrets. Her wounds would be treated, and, should they heal properly and permit it, she might one day be put through the education system and be trained as a Konoha shinobi. Perhaps Zouge would take her in, should his injuries prove truly debilitating. It had been a close thing, from what his medics were telling him.

Sarutobi Hiruzen knew sacrifice. He knew betrayal. He knew loss, suffering, desperation, despair.

Sarutobi Hiruzen could not have anticipated the depths of depravity humankind was willing to sink to for the sake of power.

* * *

_Moving trees, darkness, night. The sky was far away. There was nothing to see._

A tundra passed them by.

It was strange, the way the memory landscape somehow moved around them even as they had the distinct sensation of moving-and-not-moving simultaneously. Unnatural, but true. Time was passing. They knew that, too, and did not know how, either. Zouge had the sneaking suspicion that the indistinction of its length and speed was not wholly unrelated to Asuga's developmental stage, regardless of what might be said about subconscious object identification.

And truly, she was extraordinary for her age. To be able to remember so much, in such clear chronological order- it didn't matter that what was perceived was dulled and usually only that which moved, because those were the only things that untrained civilian senses could pick up.

Asuga was a genius.

If there was one thing the Hatake understood, it was the dangers of being a genius.

The Nara knew it well, too. They countered it with their seemingly ingrained lazy natures, and used it to their advantage as needed. The Hatake, on the other hand, took it and worked with it, because they understood that genius was neither something to be avoided nor to be taken for granted. Instead, they channeled it into hard work and a humble honor code. Both ways worked, and both had their pros and cons, but Zouge liked to think that the Hatake way was better, even if the naps and feigned obscurity could be quite tempting.

Asuga had not had the balancing counterweight of either methodologies.

_Day, night, day, night, day. _

_ Night._

Time passed them by.

Asuga had been tossed onto a pile of other rag-bound children in a covered cart. She rode with them, days and nights. It was freezing and stagnantly humid by turns under the oilcloth. None of them said much of anything. They were the unwanted ones, just like her. No one would miss them.

The oilcloth covering had darkened prematurely one day, and the air had become cold(er) and damp.

_A maw of blackness._

(_It consumed her.)_

Zouge (and the others, still with him, also seeing) blinked into the sudden darkness and had to remind himself that there was nothing wrong with his eyes or the slowness with which they were adjusting, that they were seeing and not-seeing, that they were remembering and not-living (because it all seemed so real, because it all _was_ real).

A cave, he decided. But they were still going somewhere. A tunnel. A labyrinth.

A facility.

* * *

_Echoing steps, echoing voices._

There were people, more of the ones-who-gathered.

_The masters._

"_Welcome!" Flashing teeth. "This will be your home from now on. From today until the day you die." Flashing teeth, more. "Let's get along." _

A large echoing cavern that stretched beyond sight, dimly lit and reeking of blood and pain and fear and waste.

_Thick iron bars. Clanging. Crying. Cracking air._

Warped, inhuman bodies and faces languished in exposed cages. The more human ones wept. The changing ones screeched and wailed. The irredeemable ones howled insanity. Between the rows and rows and rows of cages, the masters stalked, wielding whips that hissed and snapped through the air, yelling orders and shouting threats, opening doors and slamming bars.

_Cuffs. Chains. Heavy_.

A cage, around th(her)em, enclosing her. Many other feeble, young bodies and darting fear-filled eyes shared the cramped spaces. It no longer swung between extremes of heat, just-

_cold_

-and always the-

_Hunger_.

The masters came and went. Sometimes they took from other cages, sometimes they took from hers. Sometimes they took others, sometimes they took her. The others were older, bigger, stronger, selfish. They knew how things worked. The newcomers learned quickly, too. There was no comradery between competing strangers.

"_Hello there, girlie. Your turn_."

When they took them- "subjects," the masters called them, "three-seven-seven-oh-nine" or "eight-two-eight-five-four" or "six-six-seven-one-three"- they took them away. Sometimes th(subjects)ey were brought back, sometimes they were moved to different cages, sometimes no o(subjects)ne ever saw them again. But that didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Not here.

_Black marks and black lines and twisting scrawling things-that-bound. Chains, heavy, rough-brown-stained-hemp, tight, dragging, rubbing, sticking, tearing, painful_.

_Cartloads of bodies, still, still, too still, not-bodies-but-were, dying-dying-dead, dead-dead-rotting_.

There was always noise. Aggrieved sobbing, ragged death-throe panting heaving. And the screams. The screaming. Never stopped, never, the screaming never stopped. Trapped in the air, trapped in the shadows, trapped in the breath that would never again leave corpse-still lungs. Trapped in the throats of the still-screaming taken-ones from their distant taken-to places with the masters that took and took and took.

_Sharp pointy thing. Thin. Hard. Metal. Flat. Blade. Cutting pain. Stinging, splitting, wrong wrong wrong._

_Sharp pointy thing. Thin Hard. Metal. Pinching, pulling, prodding, splitting, wrongness._

_Sharp pointy thing. Thin. Hard. Metal. Tube. Small pain. _

_Pressure. _

_Not small pain. Not small pain, not small pain, not small notsmallnotsmall- _

_Pa(agony)in_.

_Glint of fire from rotted torches, tepid puddles, h(ate)unger h(ate)unger h(ate)unger_.

Those that returned bore hurts of all kinds. The young died quickly. The adults died quickly. The old died quickly. Everyone died.

Died and died and died and died.

_Words. Rushed, whispered, snarled, sobbed._

(_wehavetorunhavetoescapeican'tican'tcan'ttakethisanymoreohgodpleasenostopitstopitstopits(hUt uPp!)ilence._)

_Worthless things, words_.

There were more pressing concerns, even to those lost to the-

_-hunger, hunger, hunger._

They fought for the food. Scraps, really, but there was nothing else, and they had to, had to, there was never enough, never. When heads swung dizzily and tongues shriveled to sandpaper, they learned to drink blood, both others' and their own. The latter option didn't seem to help as much, but fresh rival blood was harder to get, and corpse-blood brought sickness, and the damp on the stones was never enough to dredge off.

And all the while their cordoned world kept on _dying dying dying_, so more were brought to _die die die_ too.

The young died quickly. The adults died quickly. The old died quickly. Everyone died.

_The Cesspit. _

How fitting.

Sh(Asuga)e did not die.

* * *

_Large space. Echoing, like the Cesspit, but louder, sharper, smaller. No cages. Less wailing, more howling snarling hateful screaming._

_Cracked air. _

_ "Listen up! There are fifty of you here! You will stay here so long as there remain more than half that! I don't care if you starve it out or tear each other apart, but remember! Only one of those two options come with the guarantee that _you_ survive!"_

_Flashing teeth, vicious glee. _

_ The echoing slam of a thick steel door. _

_ Another child, a boy. Crying, great heaving sobbing wails. _

_ A gangly almost-teenager, one of the oldest there. Wild, cruel eyes, prominent ribs. Grabbing hands, digging into that wailing mouth, jerking the head to the side and smashing it to the ground. The hand he held the head with had three fingers. _

_ "Shut up!" _

_ The crying stopped. _

_The almost-teen sneered, eyes wide and darting. Red splatter flecked the expression. _

"_I'm not going to die! You all can go die!" _

_Chaos. _

_Smaller figures, scrambling, stumbling, clumsy, terrified, futile. Clenched fists thrown, weak, aimless, ineffectual. Littler ones bruised each other, while bigger kids scattered, scraping up stones to throw or hit with and singling out the younger, weaker ones. The plumper ones pinched and scratched. The leaner, grimier ones aimed at eyes, soft bellies. _

_Sh(Asuga) backed up, dodging clusters of frightened, lashing-out, hair-pulling children. She did not understand. What was it that the man had said to cause this reaction? One door, closed- but they could not leave until half of them did? She did not understand. She did not understand- _

_The almost-teen lunged into her space and thrust a bloodied palm at her. Close, too close- a mirroring speckle of brown flecked the width of his face like shadows to the brighter red- _

_Sh(Asuga)e stumbled to the side, barely dodging the grabbing hand, lurched away from the crazed boy- _

_ A little girl, half-curled into a fetal position, slammed back-first into the side of the teen- _

_ Another girl, half-teen, chasing after the little girl she'd thrown- _

_ A little boy, fingers clasped tight around a rock the size of his fist, wild-eyed, bringing it down toward the cringing form of- _

_ Sh(Asuga)e scrambled around the knots of grappling children, avoiding getting tied down into any fights- _

_ A sharp burst of pain, behind her, her scalp, sharp sharp burning, hurts- _

_ "Get back here-!" _

_ Sh(Asuga)e lashed out, throwing an arm back reflexively, aimless, hitting something soft and resisting with an open, wet gap that hard, sharp things poked out of- _

_ A snarled noise of surprise- _

_ "Why you little-!" _

_ Sh(Asuga)e lurched forward against the loosened drag on the back of her head, felt a tearing, strands snapping, whirled around to get a wide eye on her attacker- _

_ A slamming mass in her gut, lost breath, gasping, falling backwards- _

_ Hands in her ragged clothes, grasping, searching, finding, locking around her neck and squeezing, and she couldn't breathe, hard-packed earth under her back, hands scrabbling futilely at locked fingers, scratching, useless, useless, reaching out to the side, groping blindly, searching for something, something- _

_ A glimpse of draping black hair, black eyes, wide eyes, wild, fearful, confused, bruised skin and a small seeping cut below, tightening fingers, tears and snot and whyhowwhatamidoing- _

_ H(Asuga)er fingers fumbled over something wet and hard and sharp and latched on, ignoring the unknown stickiness, tugging, pulling, jerking it free, and sh(Asuga)e lashed at the squeezing with it- _

_-useless, useless- _

_-gasping, gasping, swirling lights and encroaching blackness- _

_-thrust it wildly up, at the direction where the squeezing hands' squeezing arms led- _

_-impact, resistance, give- _

_A line of something warm and trickling seeped over the skin stretched between thumb and knuckle, peripherally distracting. _

_The black-haired bigger-child gurgled, jaw working, throat working, voice not working. _

_A bloom of scarlet-russet on grimy cloth, blooming, flourishing, flourishing. _

_Shuddering, wracking tremors through spindly limbs. _

_Collapse. _

_Heavy. _

_Light, dragging, greasy tendrils, clogging up her nose, her mouth, her lungs, crushing the air out of her chest, her mouth, her nose. _

_Sh(Asuga)e pushed at the sagging weight attempting to smother her, pushed and shoved and wiggled her way out from under it, scrambled two feet to the side from- _

_Him. _

_Flowing red. Slow blink, one, two, gasp choke. _

_Crumple. _

_Blankness. _

_It. _

_A scream. Distant, not the blank-it, not h(Asuga)er. A different boy, older, but still a littler-one, pale-faced, trembling, emotional. _

_Wide, horror-filled, accusing eyes. _

"_Yo-ouu! You-" _

_Stuttering, and then a flood. _

"_You killed him! You killed him, you killed him, he's dead, dead and you- your fault! Because of- it's- you killed him, he's- all your- you killed-" _

_Lost words, fumbling tongue. Something horrified, something amazed. Chaos continued. Ten paces to the left, a littler-one dodged a fist-sized block of jagged edges to take a blunt ended stone to the temple. The temple crumpled, paper under paperweight. A running girl stumbled over the fallen body and kept going without a spare glance- fleeing, fleeing, falling, still. _

"_-how- why didn't- what- killed, not, not allowed- you- dead-" _

_Not allowed? _

_-words breathed in fearful wonder- _

_Sh(Asuga)e lifted her hand to look, fingers wrapped tight, stuck firmly by cooling sticky red to the curve of hard white- _

_-breathed, caught, strangled- _

_The broken edge, right-angled, sharp-but-blunt, not enough to cut but enough to- _

_ -not allowed- _

_ A snarl, low and gurgling and menacing. A choke, suffocated and gurgling and panicked. _

_ Sh(Asuga)e looked away from her hand, looked back to more dangerous things, looked up and then down at the toppled fumbling-tongue-boy, looked at the other, new child with the bulging veins and the grey-sick skin and the dilated acid-yellow eyes and the bulging-vein-hand clenched arou(in)nd the struggling, leaking throat. _

_ -not allowed- _

snap

_Startle, recoil. Flinch, fling, flee. _

_ Acid-yellow met watching purple. Dilated acid shrunk back into sheltering shadows. Flicker, gone, remaining shades. Fleeing, fleeing, fearing. Guided only by fear. _

_ Fear-driven. _

_ Sh(Asuga)e did not close her eyes. _

_ (not to the fallenawakeneddangerous-fearful-one and not to the gangly almost-teen with the (-not allowed-) stilled eyes and the torn-open chest and the single missing rib) _

* * *

_-dead and you- _

_-not allowed- _

_-your fault- _

_-not allowed- _

_ -why didn't- _

_ -not allowed- _

_ -killed- _

"_Congratulations," A cool drawl, self-possessed, self-pleased, self-amused. _

_-not- _

_Approving. _

_-allowed...? _

_(wrongwrongwrong) _

_ "You are the last of your group. The survivors." Lilting words. Sweet. Sick. _

_ not not-allowed. _

_Flashing teeth. _

"_The strong." _

_not not-allowed. _

_A scattering of reticent forms, wary, distrustful. Th(subjects)ey hunched and huddled over themselves, far from the bodies, far from each other, independant, divided, wary. _

"_There is no need to be afraid." Crooning, fake-friendly. Cheerful. Wrongness. "There is nothing wrong with being strong." _

_not not-allowed. _

_ "In this place, only the strong are allowed to stay." _

_ not not-allowed. _

_ "Staying is a good thing. This is your home now. Why would you want to leave your home? You have nowhere else to go." _

_ not not-allowed. _

_ "Stay here and become strong." _

_ Flashing teeth. Gleeful teeth. _

_ "We will make you strong." _

_Dilated yellow acid. _

_ (allowed?)_

* * *

Many-numbered were those who were taken. Sometimes, more. Sometimes, less. Sometimes, too-many-numbered to keep well-sorted.

_ Flashing teeth. "Sharing is caring~!" _

Sh(Asuga)e, along with several other younger-ones, was sharing a cell with, for the first time, significantly older others. Adult others. None were bound by chains long enough to let any within reach of another, but while h(Asuga)er tongue was also bound, others' weren't.

_"You will not speak. Not when spoken to, and not when our backs are turned. We will know." _

_ We always know._

Dull eyes, chipped teeth, foul breath, rank stench. A gleam of something like broken chains in the murkied gaze.

_Gritty giggles, cracking snickers. "Ohhh? Quite an itty-bitty thing, ain'tcha?" _

The disheveled dull-eyed man laughed. Joy. Mania.

Different.

Sh(Asuga)e watched him most of them all.

* * *

"Quiet for a brat, ain'tcha."

Sh(Asuga)e opened one eye. Located the voice. Closed her eye.

Scrutinizing dull eyes.

"Why don'cha evr talk to'em othr brats?"

(whywhywhy)

A gritty crackling cackle. "Don' seem'ta like ya ver much, do'ey?"

A beat. Two. The dull-eyes wrinkled his nose and leant back against the bars again, chains rattling.

"Eh. Th'othrs don' like me ver much either. Says I'm craz-d or some such schit." Guttural grunt, spit. Viscous splatter across another anoth(subject)er's nape. They jerked, snapped a hand up to the splatter, glared, shouted, swore. Dull-eyes laughed. Cheerfully shouted an expletive back. "Morons, th' lot'sa'em."

Sh(Asuga)e opened the eye again. Watched him.

Dull-eyes shifted, pressing back against the bars as if to find a more comfortable position. " 'ey sit here, waitin' an' wailin' an' hope'n an' despair'n an' beggin' when 'ey all believe ey're gon' die already. If'n that's so, 'ey all oughta jus' put 'emselves outta 'ey're own mis-ry. Save 'emselves a buncha pain'n hassle, an' spare my ears while 'ey're at it."

He eyed her, a slow grin splitting his filthy face. " 'an here you be thinkin', 'if'n that's so, why'nt he done off-d 'imself yet?'"

Dull eyes, chipped teeth, foul breath, rank stench. A gleam of something like broken metal in the murkied gaze.

"Why, I'll tell ya why. I'mma waitin'."

Brown, sh(Asuga)e noted, as dull as the rest of his eyes, was the color of his pupils. One contracted to a pinprick, one dilated until the color was near indistinguishable. " An' here you be thinkin', 'waitin' fer what?' An', why, I'll tell ya what."

Dull-eyes leaned forward again, apparently having given up on finding a comfortable position against the bars. Split lips split apart to reveal half rows of jagged, broken, rotting teeth. Moved around them, dry and fumbling. Comprehensible. (Meaningless.)

He grinned, broad and ugly, leaned back again, a gleam of satisfaction, anticipation, mixed with the murk and the broken chains in dull brown eyes, and laughed. Joy. Mania.

Dull, dull brown.

* * *

_"Subject two-two-eight-four-five, approximate age two to three years, prepubescent, female, chakra network activated, affinity unknown." _

Another darkness, another changing. A smaller space, but neither small nor large compared to the others.

A master, moving a hand with a stick on a thin square sheet _(paper)_ behind another harder wood sheet. A scatter of guards, handlers, tugging chains and moving doors. Th(subjects)ey, many, pulled and prodded and jerked into place.

Reek of something sharp and unnatural.

One guard, young and subtly irate, with cruel hands and impatient jerks on chain. Sh(Asuga)e moved to keep up, but still choked on a tightened leash for her trouble. A greater, final jerk, a tumble with the momentum. Sh(Asuga)e scrambled to hands, to knees, to sharp-

-_clang(ing)-_

-as solid steel stakes were driven through the links of her chains into rippling solid stone. Sh(Asuga)e peeled her lips back from rounded baby teeth, agitated, gripped a length of the pinned chain to jerk.

No give.

Th(subjects)ey were of all ages, separated accordingly. She did not know many numbers, but if each of her fingers had as many fingers of their own as both her hands, she would still not have had enough to count them all.

_(one hundred forty-four)_

_The sharp, unnatural reek, of painsick(chemicals)nessrot and cleaned blood and waste and death-_

Black lines on grey stone, hollow and dead and full of potential to hurt.

Sh(Asuga)e eyed the flat ink warily, skittering and twisting around in what small circles her chains would allow around the unrelenting stake. It circled her, the stake, the oth(subjects)ers, curled looming and static around their feet, twined between their little circles and back again to weave them all into a promise of shared individual suffering. A stake in each circle, an oth(subject)er in each circle. Ring upon ring upon ring until rings and circles were full.

_Great groaning screeching of rock on steel on rock; rumbling clatter of stone on stone- _

The doors slammed shut.

Flat black blazed to cold life.

_ Th(s(he)ubjects)ey screamed._

* * *

Vicious sensation slammed into h(th(Asuga)em)im, agonizing and dazzling and overwhelming and h(th(Asuga)em)im but h(sub(Sakumo)jects)er and wh(pain)at though wh(e(re)n)y as-

Terrible-

terrible he(fi(agony)re)at-

terrible co(i(agony)ce)ld-

terrible blo(ha(agony)te)od-

S(h(th)e)(y) gasped (but they didn't because they were remembering theyhadnobody_therewasnoair_-), raised (notthe(i)re) hands to (not) scrabble at (nonexistent) chestmouththroat, heaved (no) lungs to scream (no) wordless sounds-

-darkness-

-sticky white chips-

-haze-

-soft oozing squelching-

-black-on-white-on-grey-on-red-

-grinding stone-

-streaking-

-venomous sickly yellow-

-and then suddenly there was clarity and awareness of self and individual thought and all the others around them once more as something formless and distinctly _sensing_ of Asuga clamped down on each of their not-presences and _dragged_ them-

Zouge gasped, as much as one could in a plane of existence beyond the physical, heaving not-air into his struggling not-lungs. All around him, he could sense the others doing the same. It took a moment, but once he'd managed to get his (entirely unnecessary, he reminded himself, because how would that even work, get a _hold_ of yourself) breathing under control, he realized there was a distinct lack of helpless figurative pacing slash hovering-fussing. He'd gotten used to Asuga's particular brand of helpless concern over the past weeks, so he usually wasn't all that aware of exactly how much she did it, but now that it was gone there was a distinct sort of… _void_, he supposed. An empty space beside him. A missing piece of presence. But no- not completely missing. Removed.

He opened not-eyes he didn't remember closing to be met with a vision of incomprehensible chaos. It was carnage, he understood, emotions and sensory details incarnate, but fragments, pieces of memories moving too fast or slow for untampered perception, thrown together into an ataxia of sensory overload. A swirling whirlwind of the luminous darkness churned around them, his and the undefined edges of the others' forms, a veil of fragile energy screening them from the pandemonius memories.

It was hard to tell with the constant whirling tendrils, but Zouge was sure that Asuga was struggling to maintain the separation from the memories while still allowing them to perceive them. Now that he was distanced enough from the memories to analyze the situation, he realized that they really had been _experiencing_ them. At some unidentifiable point, the walking through the memories had become living, first-person perspective and everything. Every injury to Asuga, they had felt. Every sensation. Even every emotion.

She was shielding them.

He tried reaching into himself, searching for the end of the bond anchored within himself. She was paying a price for them to see these things, whatever it might be. It wasn't worth it. He had to get her to stop-

-awareness brushed against straining will-

A sort of wave wracked the swirling veil, and for an instant pure, unadulterated agony washed over him- _sharp, throbbing, freezing, aching, dragging, burning, crushing_-

-_Asuga around him, shoving back at the_-

He gasped, reopening not-eyes once more and dragging at the not-air as Asuga struggled to regain the tenuous balance around them. He dared not reach out to her again. The moment of overwhelming sensation imparted him at least that knowledge. Now that the onslaught of memories had been triggered, they could not be stopped, possibly not even by Asuga herself. It seemed to be a miscalculation on her part. They were in too deep. Even if they tried to share the burden with her, they would all just end up experiencing whatever it was currently assaulting Asuga in equal measure- and that would achieve less than nothing.

He gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to snarl.

He was Zouge, and Zouge was ANBU. He had a duty to take the most practical path, even if he wished with all his heart to throw himself in with Asuga and share in her suffering, futility be damned.

The best thing they could do was watch attentively, and not let Asuga's efforts go to waste.

If they had been in the physical world, several of his teeth might have cracked from the force with which they ground together.

Forcing himself to push his personal turmoil aside for the moment, he turned his attention back to the churning mess of memories. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on. The only thing that was evident was the extreme sensory overload they contained. From the brief snatches of sound that occasionally managed to surface, it was clear that whatever was happening- _had happened_\- to Asuga was also happening to the other subjects, and whatever _that_ was was not very pleasant an experience at all.

A flicker of something more immediate-feeling brushed against his awareness. The others, he realized. Isolated into slightly separated groups. Around them, Asuga's presence kind of... _twitched_, as one of the other presences twisted slightly and did something, but her control didn't lapse this time. A strange flexing swirling from the luminous darkness and a moment of half-eternity, and then all of them were sort of lumped together into a form of shared cognizance. Instantly, the uncomfortable sensation akin to rubbing a patch of skin so long it began to hurt to even touch faded to a distant irritation. None of them tried to reach out to Asuga. They had all made the connection between the fluctuating glimpses of memories and her concentration.

Outside their little bubble, the memories seemed to be regaining some semblance of order to them, at least in the chronological aspect. The more the subjects struggled, the longer the morbid process took- and the worse their slow end. A grown man, shriveling up into a grey husk, shedding clouds of dust. An old woman, swelling up in bulging lumps, popping in showers of the viscous pink and yellow of overripe fruit. A little boy, clawing bloody streaks across his arms, chest, face, sobbing and shrieking helpless terror as flesh churned beneath tender skin and his own body turned itself inside out.

Change, blood, dust. Change, blood, dust. Over and over and over and over.

Sh(Asuga)e looked down, at her hands, arms, body, clenched muscles and thrashing limbs, clawed at her chest, her stomach, desperate to shed the agony of her own skin. Sh(they)e shivered revulsion at the (not)phantom sensation of swelling joints and burst boils slithering through the gaps between their bones.

(T)He(i)r flesh _r_i_p_p_l_e_d_.

Sh(Asuga)e was screaming, sh(Asuga)e thought. But sh(Asuga)e also wasn't, she was(n't), she (was)n't, (t)he(i)r mouth was open there was no sound. (T)He(i)r skin pulled tight over emaciated limbs, stretching, stretching, splitting wide in patterned rows that softly rose through grimy skin, magma through split earth, shriveled chrysanthemums in ashen winter on stalks of smooth smooth white. Taut, drying, shrivelling, hardening, weighing down, down, down as the unforgiving floor seeped through (t)he(i)r pores and rose through (t)he(i)r veins, tide of inevitable suffocation.

There was something on her arm, vaguely.

There was something on her back.

_There was something in her arm, in her back, in her neck, in her eye-_

S(t)he(y) watched, vaguely, (on her hands, on her knees, on her stomach, on her side) as the smooth, smooth white floating between the crimson petals cracked, and split, too. Watched as a lighter color of red peeked through the gap, porous and light, and melted. Watched it churn within the cracked cradle of white, warp, twist, twist. Watched it grow, winding tendrils that thickened and whitened as they reached for the skyless blackness, watched it falter and grey and dry and shrivel and crack and leak and melt and grow again, reaching, reaching, reaching for nothing.

(bone marrow, (s)t(he)y registered, just as vaguely, bone marrow and chakra corruption, chakra mutation, mutilation, disfiguration, deformation, deviation, _differentiation_)

Beneath it all, there was a burning in (t)he(i)r senses, (t)he(i)r body, (t)he(i)r soul, s(t)he(y) didn't know where, so little and gentle, a brush of forgotten breeze, a touch of crying sky.

S(t)he(y) w(ere)as glowing.

_-fragmenting, snow, dust, powder-_

S(t)he(y) w(ere)as glowing.

(((((S(t)he(y) w(ere)as dying.)))))

-little growing things, little branching things, little trees, little forests, little worlds-

S(T)he(y) needed to cut them off.

S(T)he(y) needed to-

-needed to cut-

-to cut them-

-cut them off-

-cut-

-cut-

-off-

The f(low)ing tendrils )twisted( and (flowed) and (flowed) and )twisted( and (flowed) and (flowed) and fl)(ed as all that could have been should have been would have been-

Sn(ar)ling silence, s(t)he(y) jammed (t)he(i)r g(nar)led d(i)g(i)ts down( on( the arm, c(laws) shear)(ing de)(ep and s)l(iding( )slick be)n)eath skin( )(and)( )muscle )un(til they gr)(a)(ted a)gainst( war(p)ed bone, roug)h(ly shav)(ing through the (stem)s of win)(d)(ing wh(i)te. They tumb()led t)o t(he grou(n)d, sh)(a)(t)(t)(er)(ing on impact,

(..grey..)

(. ..d.u.s.t.. .)

( . . ..n.o.t.h.i.n.g.. . .)

)((they fell, and the darkness rushed up to meet them))(

* * *

Night gave darkness.

Stars gave light.

Light in darkness.

Why would stars give light in darkness if they could see in it?

There were no stars here.

the stars did not watch her

(but (they) did)

* * *

fire and ice, death and pain, burning so cold, freezing so hot, numbing and scalding and eating away

_-ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts-_

until nothing was left but ice and fire, pain and death, sense beyond sense, awareness and lack

_-pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-_

in all that was and all that wasn't, all that mattered and all that didn't

_-whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy-_

and in all the ways that didn't and did not

_-ihateyouihateyouihateyouihateyou-_

fire passed and ice passed and death passed and pain passed and sense passed and lack passed

_-stopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopit-_

and all the light was grey grey dust and all the night was burning

_-justletusdieinpeace_

* * *

S(t)he(y) opened (t)he(i)r eyes to familiarity.

(S(t)he(y) opened (t)he(i)r eyes to darkness.)

Cold stone beneath (t)he(i)r hands, rough cloth over (t)he(i)r back.

_Cold air still in (t)he(i)r chest._

Cold stone in (t)he(i)r skin, (t)he(i)r flesh, (t)he(i)r bones.

S(t)he(y) trailed stone-stiff fingers up (t)he(i)r arm, (t)he(i)r shoulder, (t)he(i)r chest, (t)he(i)r ribs, _click clack grind scrape_, dug them down _deep deep deep_.

Shatter, dust, grey.

Grey, dust, nothing.

S(t)he(y) ached.

* * *

Echoes. Always there, in the dark of the cold of the stone of the black. Noise.

Footsteps, water-drip-drip-drip, rattling chains, creaking rusty iron and steel, empty in the stagnant of the black.

Voices.

Quiet, loud, murmuring, snarling, rapid and steady and anguished and fearful and toneless and angry in hunger and frustration and pain and grief and death and-

-_screaming_-

Blink. Shutter, black, lighter black, black.

_Smoldering dilated acid-yellow._

S(t)he(y) looked, looked after having not looked for so long, looked and didn't look away.

S(t)he(y) watched, and the dozen pairs of sickly-acid eyes watched back, a spectrum of spiteful sentinels.

* * *

The young, the old, the creatures, the subjects- the others.

The others were losing themselves.

_(clarity)_

Day by night by night by day by black-white-grey-dimness, sh(Asuga)e watched the young die and the old die and the subjects change and the changed become creatures.

Time passed. Nothing to do with time but watch, and so sh(Asuga)e saw much and came to know about the facility. The young changed, the old changed, the creatures changed, sh(Asuga)e changed-

And yet there were those that did not change.

The ones-who-held-metal, the guards, keepers, handlers- they did not change. The masters did not change. Some of both came and went, but never did they change the way the others did, the way th(subjects)ey did.

_Why_, th(subjects)ey so often asked. _Why do this. Why us. Why, why, why_.

Sh(Asuga)e had never known this word, why, but she came to know it.

And as she watched and saw and comprehended, she came to use this word, too.

Because they were similar. Th(subjects)ey and the masters and the others who pushed and pulled and turned locks and grasped metal, th(subjects)ey and they were the same.

She and they were the same.

They all held the power of the (not not-allowed) killing.

(why)

And yet they did not change.

They did not die.

Why should they get to decide who changed?

Why should they get to decide who dies?

(whywhywhy)

And as she watched and saw and came to know the ones that held the other ends of the things-that-pained and things-that-bound, she came to know something of her own.

Whatever this (why) was, whyever it was, she did not like it.

_("Stay here and become strong.")_

She _disliked_ it.

_("We will make you strong.")_

She would not let them decide she would die.

Even if they could decide everything else that happened in the facility, even if they could decide everything else that happened to her. This would be her proof of her Self. The intangible thing that endured that which was dealt and carried her through the unmeasured time was both Self and Hers in a way that she somehow inherently understood would never belong to another- she would keep it.

She would make this a way of things, too.

She, too, was changing. That was something she could not do anything about, not like the Selfness, the awareness of being. She didn't know what she counted as, fear-driven or hunger-driven. She didn't think she was either. She didn't think she ever had been.

It didn't matter. Nothing ever mattered.

Such was a way of things, and so would it remain (even as it changed).

* * *

_Black and grey and black and grey. _

Time passed.

"Do ya like 'em scars?"

Dull-eyes, dull, but glinting sharp.

"No?"

He cackled gleefully, silence broken as (t)he(i)r own stillness ended.

Heaviness, slow, dragging limbs, dragging eyes. Closed eyes.

The rattle of chains, clanking of cold metal bars.

Heaviness, slow, dragging limbs, dragging eyes. Opening eyes.

The ones-who-held-metal stood by the outline of rust-burnt-grey in the black, a train of discontent subj(creatures)ects bound in a line behind.

Waiting.

He cackled gleefully.

"_Kill 'em like 'ey've ne'er kilt ya before."_

* * *

_Black and grey and black and grey. _

Time passed.

(Blink. Shutter, black, lighter black, black.)

_Smoldering dilated acid-yellow._

Acid, burning, corroding- frothy saliva on stone, pus-filled stomach bile on chains.

Acid eyes, glazed eyes, dull dull lightless eyes.

-_retching, heaving_-

Sickness among the subjects, the creatures.

-_from the cold from the blood from the hunger from the changing it didn't matter it didn't nothing ever mattered_-

(The young died quickly. The adults died quickly. The old died quickly. Everyone died.)

(_The Cesspit.) _

(And all the while their cordoned world kept on _dying dying dying_, so more were brought to _die die die_ too.)

(_A face, tense and grim, twin orbs of deep purple, calling, reaching hands, reaching, reaching, reaching back-) _

Blink.

A face, tense and grim, twin orbs of deep purple, hunched, shrunk back, shuffling steps, hands filled with a bundle of smaller limbs and the arm of the man shuffling beside her, the scar of a terrible gash falling down the side of his temple.

Sh(Asuga)e did not blink.

Sh(Asuga)e moved, and the others, subjects, creatures, whatever they were no longer, moved, too, parting to make what little space could be made for her to step. No more did any of th(us)em struggle against each other, against h(Asuga)er, when they knew they had nothing to gain, when they knew they could never gain from h(Asuga)er.

(_hunger-driven. fear-driven_)  
step. (part)

step. (part)

step. (part)

The huddled group of newcomers trudged down the row, towards h(Asuga)er cage, by h(Asuga)er cage, past h(Asuga)er cage, tentative, begrudging, mutinous, frightened. The ones-who-held-metal (guards, the newcomers whispered, slavers, _monsters_) shook their whips at the newcomers, jerked their chains, snapped harsh words of meaning. The newcomers kept shuffling, whispers quieter, looking at the _guards_, looking at _the(creatures)m_, whispering, whispering, whispering.

Th(we)y looked back, silent disinterest, distantly evaluating.

(creatures, the newcomers whispered, animals, beasts, _monsters_)

-_whisperingwhisperingwhispering_-

(what is that)(why are we here) (what do they want from us) (are we going to) (no no nonono) (don't look them in the eyes who _noneofthem_)

Sh(Asuga)e was parallel, to the newcomers, to the bars; a line of bars, a line of newcomers, a line of fear parting before (t)he(m)r.

step. (part)

step. (part)

step. (part)

A row of bars, perpendicular from the ones separating the newcomers and h(them)er, halting h(th)e(i)r steps.

Sh(Asuga)e halted (t)he(i)r steps.

Clattering chains, harsh commands, whispering whispering whispering. The newcomers continued their shuffling steps, heads down, disappearing into the perpetual gloom with the muted orange torchlight.

Sh(Asuga)e did not blink.

(_A face, tense and grim, twin orbs of deep purple, calling, reaching hands, reaching, reaching, reaching back-) _

Sh(Asuga)e watched the procession go. Silent. Pensive.

A creature, lost to the hunger, shoved its disfigured maw between the perpendicular bars, opportunistic, lunging against them in an attempt to savage (t)he(i)r ear, (t)he(i)r neck, (t)he(i)r face-

-sh(Asuga)e distractedly tilted her head out of the way, bared her teeth, snapped back, instinct, teeth closing down on flesh and tearing, tearing, tearing flesh open on a jaw down to the bone, teeth grinding on the resistance, screeching, howling, in h(Asuga)er ear-

_(_-_twin orbs of deep purple_-_)_

Sh(Asuga)e looked into the darkness and did not blink.

* * *

"Sheh looks lik ya."

Dull-eyes bared his teeth and spat at the ground. Eyed (t)he(m)r, like a piece of meat that something else was going to eat.

"Didja know that." Statement more than question. At her, not to (t)he(m)r. "Th' stocky bast'd…" A hack, cough, spit. "Not s'much. Some. But th' bitch, th' snotty 'un, yeh, sheh- sheh looks lik ya."

He gestured with his chin from where he was slumped against a wall, jerky, ungainly, effective. The tense-faced one was also sat against a wall, opposite on the far side three rows away, curled into herself and huddled into the side of the face-scarred and peering with darting, fearful eyes.

He chucked.

"D'ya know why s'm people look alik?"

(T)He(i)r hands were dirty, fingers curled in stiffened hooks. She picked at one, at its tip, at the dirt packed in tight beneath it. The nail was thick and darkened and high-arched along a middle ridge, half talon half claw.

" 's cus o' inheritance. Bloodlines. Fam'ly an' reproduction. Though, I really dun' 'spect ya t' underst'nd, I suppose. Ya dun' look lik ya've been lov'd a day o' yer life."

Squinting eyes, dull, dull. Brown like mud. Tightening, relaxing, disinterest, amusement. At (t)he(m)r, at the tense-faced, at the face-scarred, at (t)he(m)r.

"Sheh looks lik ya, but ya dun' look lik 'er." A grunt, ragged and blunt. "Ya'll ne'er grow long 'nough ta look lik 'er."

A casting glance, from (t)he(m)r, at the dull eyes, at the tense-faced. Closed eyes in the dimness. Consuming black was easier on the eyes than black-greys shapes.

"D'ya know," he mused, gravelly sing-song lilt to his amusement. "D'ya know, wha' it means, ta look lik others?"

S(t)he(y) tapped a wicked nail against another, not looking. It caught in an indent, skittered along the curve.

"C'n be coinc'dence. Unlikely, but it c'n happ'n. More lik, tho, it'll be relations. Shared blud."

Dull-eyes lifted a hand, his own set of wickedly curved talons, long and brittle and yellow-tinged grey, pointing together at the (un)familiar newcomer pair. They didn't notice, too preoccupied in their own misery and eyeing the much closer other newcomers and subjects in their vicinity.

"_They_ look alik 'cause they's 'ppar'ntly siblings. S'm parents. So, shared blud." The talons dipped and dropped, exhaustion suddenly flashing across greasy the usual greasy sneer.

"Th' world ou'side, it's diff'nt th'n here. P'ple c'n afford 'ta spare a thought for oth'rs. Bein' all, 'every man for'em selv's,' ain't th' only way 'ta survive. P'ple c'n have frien's. Blud sticks wi' blud."

Dull-eyes squinted at (t)he(m)r, at her. Something she couldn't recogni(pity)ze lurked in the dull gaze. Squinted, squinted, blinked, shifted, sideways. Went to the newcomer pair. The siblings.

Snickered.

"Those two'll die, too. Slow'r, maybes, but only as slow's dying c'n get, here. I's seen oth'r siblings c'm here b'fore, too. S'm do stick t'gether t' th' death."

Sneer.

"Mos' don't."

Dull-eyes, grinned, giggled, grimaced, grunted, groaned, spat out a gob of something viscous brown and sharp yellowish grey. A swollen, slimy tongue probed the gaps between rotten teeth.

"Ah," he sighed, nudging the rotten piece of enamel. The slur had thickened. Worsened. "Ther' go's 'nother 'un."

* * *

"Stand."

Braced legs, one or two on left out forwards, one or two on right out backwards. Chest out, stomach in, hands or claws or wings or tails or teeth out and open and spread. Head up, eyes on the master's feet.

A _crack_ of the whip. The command. Demand and obedience.

A muffled shriek, scraping shuffling.

"_Stand_."

Braced legs, one or two on left out forwards, one or two on right out backwards. Chest out, stomach in, hands or claws or wings or tails or teeth out and open and spread. Head up, eyes on the master's feet. One more leg leaking wetwetlifeinjury_weakness_.

Measured steps, one two one, down the rows and rows. Inspecting. Huddles of other masters, along the walls, leaning sideways, looking, watching, making more marks with sticks on pieces of white _(paper)_ over flat pieces of wood.

"Turn."

Braced legs, chest out, stomach in, limbs spread, head up, eyes down. One step, twist, two. Front to back, back in front.

Too slow.

_Crack_.

Muffled cry, _drip, drip_.

"_Turn_."

Braced legs, chest out, stomach in, limbs spread, head up, eyes down. One step, twist, two. Front to back, back in front.

"Down."

Hunched backs, folded haunches, hands and feet then knees and elbows touching cold stone. Heads down.

"Stand."

Braced legs, chest out, stomach in, limbs spread, head up, eyes down.

"Ready."

Bent limbs, bared teeth, rumbling growls, muscles coiled and tense and-

"Stand."

-_drive to hunt, to chase, to catchrip_kill-

_Crack_. "_Stand!_"

_Shriek, pain (drip, drip), snarl, anger, instinct, _lunge-

_Crack_, commanded the whip again, snagging tight around suddenly struggling neck, jerking, choking, dragging down down down-

_Crack_, echoed more whips, _crackcrackcrack_, dragging the mindless ones down to the ground by their throats. _Crackle_, sang the fractured sparks of coldhotlightning, _punishment_, _punishment_.

"Stand," said the master.

The other masters watched the master-that-commanded, eyes burning with things-that-differed. Fearangerhateawedetermination_fear_.

They looked at the master, the strong-master, all the creatures and all the masters.

The creatures stood.

* * *

"I hadda sib'lin' once," dull-eyes mumbled, voice hoarse. He'd screamed until he spat blood with every breath again, writhing on the floor where the guards had dumped him hours before. A new grey ridge protruded from his spine, jagged and bloody. A similar ridge mirrored it in rust-brown-black along the bony edge of her own knee. "He'd lik'd a girl. The girl lik'd 'im back. Th' got marri'd. Our par'nts b'came th' girl's, an' the girls' par'nts b'came ours. None o' us shar'd blud, bu' their kids w'd."

A long wheezing pause. Like he was catching breath, or listening to the oddly smooth whistles the air made passing through his throat, between the holes in his teeth.

"Th' girl hadda bru'th, too. He'da lik'd this place, mebbe. Th' stalagmites up ther'. He did rocks fer' a liv'in. Carved 'em, in'ta things, th' way our fam'ly carved ice. In'ta plants. P'ple."

Dull eyes rolled in sunken sockets, blown wide and unseeing, seeing only things that could no longer be seen.

"S'm year' back, he got'a job, a big job, from thes' p'ple, thes' _shinobi_. They wann'd 'im ta carv' th' face o' their god in'ta th' side o' a mount'n. He asked wha' kinda spirit they wann'd 'im ta make real for 'em."

He laughed.

"They laugh'd a' 'im, an' tol' 'im their god was real, an' they'd let'm meet 'im."

A sigh, (wistful) and something.

"He wen'. He met their god."

Dull, dull eyes, laughing in the dark.

"Woud'ja lik' ta see wha' th' face o' a god looks lik?"

Broken, but still-wicked talons rose and pointed, up, up, at the darker dark that the spikes of stone poked out from far above.

"Ther'," he singled out, "Tha' clus'tr ther', with the fiv' stubby un's. Iff'n ya c'n brek tha' 'un, th' way ya c'n break rocks ta carv' ou' shapes, ya'll be able ta see th' face o' a god."

He grinned, and this time showed teeth, loose, rotting, foul.

"I don' wan'a look. D'you? D'you?"

* * *

The tense-faced and the face-scarred held each other and trembled. _(Shivered_._)_

S(t)he(y) had grey stone-skin that chipped and cracked and sometimes shed dust. S(t)he(y) had not known coldness in a long time. S(t)he(y) could not truly know something s(t)he(y) had nothing to compare to.

_-water-that-steamed poured into a tub of rags, slowly slowly freezing to sharp harness again-_

S(t)he(y) shivered, too, without knowing the coldness.

(t)He(i)r corner, because it was (t)he(i)rs, yes, (t)he(i)r corner had a pile of old, reeking rags because the others, the one-who-were-not-yet-creatures, hoarded them and hid themselves in them and most often woke up again from sleep when they had more of them to hide in. S(t)he(y) mimicked them, and fought, because those who had many rags were strong and often attacked for them and those that were weak were attacked for them and left to die, but those that were the strongest had the most and were left more alone.

The subjects had been moved. There were fewer chains, then fewer, still, then none at all. The chains were saved for the newly changed, still provoked by the light rustle of shifting weight against a wall, still mindless with the new fear and hunger driving. They would learn.

The tense-faced and the face-scarred had been moved, too. S(t)he(y) had been moved. S(t)he(y) and the tense-faced and the face-scarred had been moved into the same cage.

The tense-faced and the face-scarred had lost half the rags they'd come in. They shivered.

_Clattering, jangling iron and stone, scuffing boots._

A group of guards, making the rounds, slamming bars roughly as the buckets of scraps were dumped between them, scattering on the ground.

_A surge of grimy limbs and jagged maws, a scrambled struggle, flashing claws and guttural snarls._

The creatures went first. The still-more-human subjects skittered around the edges of the struggle and snagged what scraps scattered beyond the scuffles.

S(t)he(y) prowled forward on silent feet, claws clicking quietly against rough stone, scattering others as they scattered scraps. The others hissed and spat and scuttled back from her, leaving the scraps but not quite leaving, still eyeing, knowing s(t)he(y) always took her pick and left the rest.

The tense-faced and the face-scarred eyed her.

S(t)he(y) caught their eyes, and eyed them back.

Held their eyes, as the wrinkled, grey-skinned, dust-shedding husk of an old woman lunged for her throat from the side, and s(t)he(y) opened her own mouth, and snatched the creature by the ear, and jerked her head, and tore the ear downwards, and let the ear go to dangle uselessly by a limp strip of flesh from the creature's head as it shrieked and shrieked and scrambled back away from her, chastised and cowering.

S(t)he(y) let the tense-faced's and the face-scarred's eyes go to pick up her due scraps, and let her silent feet drag sideways a bit to kick some scraps in their direction as she turned to go back to her own corner of rags, baring bloodied teeth at the cunning still-human subjects inching toward her rags. S(t)he(y) could not see it, but s(t)he(y) could feel the tense-faced's and the face-scarred's eyes on her all the way back.

Dull-eyes squinted through a disproportionately bulging eye at her. "Wha'st ta you, now? Quiet lil' beast lik ya'd ne'er been mean, but ne'er nice neith'r. Di' mah fam'ly craz'talk bleed yu'r stone-sk'n hert?"

S(t)he(y) said nothing, as always, for her throat knew not the words, and the dull-eyes bared his teeth and sneered, as always, giggling dementedly.

* * *

"Stand."

Rows upon rows, all no-longer-human. By each, a guard or master just a few steps away.

"Ready."

A strong-master at the front, two more lesser masters on each side, all five with buckets of water at their feet. More masters behind them, waiting.

"Return!"

Limbs tucked in, shifting weight, darting back, back to the sides of designated partners, presenting a flank or shoulder to wear the brunt of the attacks.

Water first, punishing pressure, but harmless, giving. Then fire, flashy but harmless, until the water burned away, and then dry, and hot, and burning, burning. Lightning, just as dazzling, but less heat and more pain, and faster, faster, unrelenting. Earth, solid spikes, punishment without give, terrible consequences but still there, still threatening, still necessary to stand against. And wind, last of all, most challenging for speed and lack of warning, unseeable, demanding proactive effort to defend, defend, defend, suffer, and still defend again.

Lashes stung the air, punishing and correcting. "_Return! Turn! Forward! Stand! Return!_"

_Return, turn, forward, stand, return._ S(t)he(y) lashed her tail, balancing weight, scales scraping along the furred tip, and _moved_. Fire along one forearm, wind slicing into the other shoulder. _Back, turn, forward, return_.

The creatures circled their masters, defending against the onslaught.

_"So inefficient," one master along the sidelines grumbled. _

_ "They're animals now," another returned. "Too dumb to understand defensive tactics. We can only train them this way now."_

_Forward, stand, turn, return_.

"Stand," said the strong-master. "Down."

_Hunched backs, folded haunches, hands and feet then knees and elbows touching cold stone. Heads down._

The strong-master, the training-master, strode down the rows, lesser masters trailing just behind, inspecting the subjugated creatures. He paused at one or another to lift a boot and nudge at a crested head or furred flank.

"Return." He rolled the word over in his mouth. "It's a bit of a mouthful when in a rush, no?"

"It also shares the command word 'turn' in it," one other the lesser masters agreed. "Perhaps we should find a different word to use?"

"Like what? We've discussed this. We can't use 'guard'." The training-master snorted. "They hear us say that for other things too much. Guard shift. Guard duty. Guard the rear. Armguard. And the newer ones among them always speak about 'the guards'. They've already got strong mental associations with the word."

The lesser master shrugged, pushing his glasses up with the end of his brush. "Then use something else. They won't understand the actual meaning of the word regardless. They just have to recognize the sound of it."

"So, what then? Shorten it?"

"That would be one solution, yes."

"Return," the training-master said, doing the rolling thing again. "Ret. Do you know what ret means?"

"I wasn't aware that it was a word."

"It means to soak," the training-master said, terribly amused. "For flax or hemp. To soak in water to soften it and separate the fibers. To break it in." He hummed, seemingly satisfied with the word. "Alright. Ret. Suppose we'll have to retrain them now. Shouldn't be too bad, though, since it's just the first day."

He cracked his whip. The creatures fixed their eyes on him once more. The training master grinned.  
"Stand."

They stood.

"_Ret_."

* * *

S(t)he(y) stared, down at the corner, the corner that was hers, at the emptiness that was not hers.

Some of the others gave her a large berth.

Some of the others inched forwards, maws hanging open, eager at the promise in the air of consequences, be it upon the challenged or the challenger.

For while rags and scraps were sometimes taken when owners were gone and sometimes traded among the still-human subjects, none dared steal a whole _nest_ of rags from those that were strongest-among-them. When such things happened, blood was promised.

The newcomers were no longer newcomers. They knew this, too. They knew that even when the masters came and took the strong ones away their things were not to be touched beyond a threadbare rag or two. They knew this. The tense-faced and the face-scarred knew this.

They watched her from behind the thin spread of her rags over their legs and shoulders, unmoving, as the circle of others moved in.

(_something inside but not really inside, closing up like death-ash over a hole in the dark, disappearing like the warmth of the sun on face of a blind child)_

The others circled, sensing the challenge, scenting for weakness, inching forward, inch by inch by inch.

S(t)he(y) lifted her head.

The creatures lunged, teeth and fang and talon out and reaching for vulnerable stomach and throat.

S(t)he(y) fought.

* * *

S(t)he(y) stood over the bodies of the challengers, panting, spitting out bits of fur and grit and scales.

S(t)he(y) did not know the cold, but she was bleeding and she only had so much blood, and the cloth of the rags could stop the bleeding, and being a stronger-among-them without rags meant fighting, and fighting, and fighting, and death.

S(t)he(y) turned her head to look at the siblings.

They shivered, and reeked fear.

(They spoke to each other, and s(t)he(y) heard them, clear and magnified by a thousand thousand rememberings.)

"It won't hurt us," the face-scarred murmured to the tense-faced. "It's scared of us. Remember how it gave up its food to us and ran. And look." The tense-faced looked. "It's too injured to try anything."

S(t)he(y) stepped towards the siblings.

"Well it's trying _something_."

"What do you want me to do? Talk to it?"

"It can't understand you."

"I don't know. We can try. What else can we do?"

The tense-faced had no answer.

"How do you talk to something like that?"

"_I don't know_. It's- it's an animal. Talk to it like an animal."

The tense-face didn't respond. Her eyes were on (t)he(m)r. The face-scarred stopped talking, too, and turned to eye (t)he(m)r, posture defensive, wary. Neither stood, backs pressed to the wall, but shifted feet beneath themselves in preparation to move.

Another step, and another, and another. And then s(t)he(y) was standing before them.

S(t)he(y) curled blunted talons into just one rag, the largest, draped over the tense-faced's stomach.

Her expression crumpled instantly, folding like skin on a burning corpse.

"No. _No_." The tense-faced denied, scolding, like to a disobedient dog. "_Bad_."

Grimy claws- no, fingers, still fingers, still-human- hooked into the coarse fabric and tugged with force. "Give that- let go. Let _go_." A sudden jerk, and the tense-faced was reeling back against the wall from her own momentum, cloth in hand, as the alarmed face-scarred moved forward and swung for a clumsy cuff.

_Instinct_.

_-a flash of teeth, snap, catch, tear-_

The face-scarred cried out, and stumbled back, too, cradled hand seeping red against his chest.

And all the shaky confidence leached out of their faces in the realization that their own weakness had not disappeared after all, and was not an exception to her strength. That no, she did not fear them. That _they_ feared _her_.

S(t)he(y) took a step forward again, regaining the lost ground, lips curled and eyes narrowed and ears flat, and the siblings shrunk back.

"I need it," the tense-faced said through cracked-bleeding lips in grating notes, "More than you do."  
S(t)he(y) blinked once, slowly, through still-narrowed eyes, and looked at the brother.

"I need it," the face-scarred said with a hoarse tremble, "_We_ do, more than you."

S(t)he(y) blinked once more, slowly, and understood.

_(Blud sticks wi' blud.)_

The dull-eyes was wrong.

These siblings, too, were fear-driven. Driven to each other, driven against dying.

The dull-eyes was wrong, but right, too.

_(Those two'll die, too.)_

S(t)he(y) stepped forward.

"No," the tense-face whispered, tense face crumpling into something fearful for the first time. "No, no, you can't. I need it. _I need it_."

_(what about me?)_

"You're like them," the tense-face continued, words coming faster. "You can fight. You don't need it. I- we need it."

(t)He(i)r teeth clamped on the threadbare cloth, solid and unyielding, one pair of cuspids just shy of brushing the tense-faced's fingers. S(t)he(y) pulled and it came.

The tense-faced gave a strangled cry, but did not attempt an attack.

Having made a show of reasserting her dominance against the siblings to all those still eyeing her neck, s(t)he(y) made another show of casting her gaze about. None quite dared meet it.

Slowly, methodically, s(t)he(y) went to the vanquished ones' things and took what she needed.

S(t)he(y) let the siblings keep the rest of her rags.

As s(t)he(y) sunk into her corner once more, back to the stone and filthy rags pressed against oozing holes, the dull-eyes opened his mouth again, as he was wont to.

"Aw," the dull-eyes simpered, "Poor girlie. No fam'ly for this girlie, no." He cackled, and spat rust.

* * *

Notes:

As you might be able to discern (if I wrote it well enough, anyways), Asuga's mental processing and ability to convey information through the memory seal progressively improve in coherency at a very rapid pace. This is in part due to the fact that she's had a lot of time to think about and analyze her experiences, given the lack of literally anything else to do in the facility in between the fighting and killing and dying. At the same time, there are points where she clearly doesn't know certain words or terms for things, but her mental dialogue is more developed. This discordance is because she's a child still learning about the world she's been thrust into. She does not necessarily know the words being used in her mental narration because, again, she's not actually using words- she's thinking in the language of ideas, and she has a very strong grasp of such things, because she's been observing and asking herself _why_ in an attempt to adapt to the situations she keeps getting put into.

There are a lot of places where parentheses are used this time. Eheh, heh, whoops. Sorrynotsorry. Anyways. Grammatically, I butchered my own writing. Symbolically, there's (in theory, you guys are my judges here) a justifiable reason for this. We are simulating her thought process. More importantly, we are simulating how her audience is perceiving everything, too. There's a discordance from the viewing of memories, particularly ones that have not been abstracted, because memories are, by default, experienced from the perspective of the rememberer. Thus, our Konoha and Uzu friends are having to deal with the complexities of differentiating their senses of self from that of Asuga while experiencing those memories.

* * *

Summarized Scenes:

Starting from the scene with the fifty children in a room- the children turn on each other. Asuga is grabbed by the hair and dragged back. She fumbles around blindly and grabs something, and uses it to lash out at her attacker. She shoves the object she grabbed into her attacker's throat, who she can then struggle out from under and watch as he collapses, dead. Another boy screams at the dead body. She looks at the things she used to kill him, and realizes it's a bone- specifically a rib. The screaming boy is cut off by another child, the first to change, who is a fear-driven type.

In the aftermath, Asuga is a bit out of it, but is taught by one of the proctors of the test that there was nothing wrong with her act of killing (in self-defense). Of course, there is no distinction taught there.

Two rather self-explanatory scenes. The subjects are shuffled around their cages. Asuga gets a new neighbor. He doesn't talk to her, but at her, because he doesn't actually expect a response. He speaks what some might think of as gibberish, explaining why they should and shouldn't kill themselves, and says the reason why he hasn't himself is because he's waiting- for what, though, is temporarily censored by yours truly for plot reasons.

One of the first major experiments/procedures. The sensory input is too strong and has too great a mental impact on her at the time, so the conveyance of the memory is disrupted, chaotic, and rather uncontrollable. Asuga does her best to mitigate it and dampen and condense it into a more conceive and objectively informative form, pulling back a bit because she recognizes that maybe it wouldn't be a good idea for them to _actually_ experience everything she remembers full-blast. Her control isn't perfect, just like how normal people can't control staring off into space in thought once in a while. Over this and the next few scenes, where she slowly recovers and adjusts to the changes that have been wrought on her physically, Asuga manages to take the chance to dampen the sensory inputs beside visual, and kind of figures out herself exactly what happened in the aftermath of that event. It's still not quite perfect, hence the use of all the s(t)he(y)'s and such, but it progressively gets better through the following scenes. (Who is seeing? Who is thinking? Who is feeling?)

That's mostly it, for confusing scenes. However, for those who might have had a hard time understanding the dull-eyes, his later speaking bits have to do with these:

There is an explanation about the meaning of blood relations and family and physical similarity in appearance. His conclusion is that blood means something, implies that it is even important, but only in the outside world. Such concepts are effectively irrelevant in the facility.

There is a reflection on his own family. His brother married a woman. The woman had a brother. The brother was a stonemason, a sculptor, who once got a big job from shinobi to carve the face of their god into the side of a mountain (technically cliff, but eh; sound familiar?). He says more things about seeing the faces of gods, but that's cryptic for plot reasons.

I think that's it. Feel free to message me or leave a review if there's any other confusing bits of scenes you want me to explain! Of course, if that answer is plot-related, I reserve the right to give you the usual "wait and read and see! ;P" response!


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